
foMMY and GrIZEL 


By 


JAMES M. BARRIE 


CHAPTERS I-X. 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers 

153-157 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 



Tommy and Grizel 


By 

/ 

JAMES M. BARRIE 



CHAPTERS I-X. 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers 
- V 

15.3-157 fifth Avenue, new york 


1 


TWO COPIES RECEIVED, 


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a 




L Ibrary of Congrot* 
Office of t b • 

APR 1 8 1900 

Register of Copyright* 


Copyright, 1900, by Charles Scribner’s Sons 



ScCOND COPY, 

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lSr,f<r<y<K 


TOMMY AND GRIZEL 


BY J. M. BARRIE 

Author of “ Sentimental Tommy” “ The Little Minister etc. 


CHAPTER I 

HOW TOMMY FOUND A WAY 

P. PYM, the colossal Pym, 
that vast and rolling figure, 
who never knew what he 
was to write about until he 
dipped grandly, an author 
in such demand that on 
the foggy evening which starts our story 
his publishers have had his boots re- 
moved lest he slip thoughtlessly round 
the corner before his work is done, as was 
the great man’s way — shall we begin with 
him or with Tommy, who has just arrived 
in London carrying his little box and 
leading a lady by the hand ? It was 
Pym, as we are about to see, who in the 
beginning held Tommy up to the public 
gaze, Pym who first noticed his remark- 
able indifference to female society, Pym 

.who gave him . But, alack, does no 

one remember Pym for himself ; is the 
king of the “Penny Number” already 
no more than a button that once upon a 
time kept Tommy’s person together? 
And we are at the night when they first 
met ! Let us hasten into Marylebone, 
before little Tommy arrives and Pym is 
swallowed like an oyster. This is the 
house, 22 Little Owlet Street, Marylebone, 
but which were his rooms it is less easy to 
determine, for he was a lodger who flitted 
placidly from floor to floor according to 
the state of his finances, carrying his ap- 
parel and other belongings in one great 
armful and spilling by the way. On this 
particular evening he was on the second 
floor front, which had a fire-place in the 
comer, furniture all his landlady’s and 
mostly horse -hair, little to suggest his 
calling save a noble saucerful of ink, and 
nothing to draw attention from Pym, who 
lolled, gross and massive, on a sofa, one 


leg over the back of it, the other drooping, 
his arms extended and his pipe, which he 
could find nowhere, thrust between the 
buttons of his waistcoat, an agreeable 
pipe-rack. He wore a yellow dressing- 
gown, or could scarcely be said to wear it, 
for such of it as was not round his neck 
he had converted into a cushion for his 
head, which is perhaps the part of him we 
should have turned to first. It was a big 
round head, the plentiful gray hair in 
tangles, possibly because in Pym’s last 
flitting the comb had dropped over the 
banisters, the features ugly and beyond 
life-size, yet the forehead had altered little 
except in color since the day when he was 
near being made a fellow of his college ; 
there was sensitiveness left in the thick 
nose, humor in the eyes, though they so 
often watered, the face had gone to flab- 
biness at last, but not without some lines 
and dents, as if the head had resisted the 
body for a space before the whole man 
rolled contentedly down hill. 

He had no beard. “Young man, let 
your beard grow.” Those who have for- 
gotten all else about Pym may recall him 
in these words ; they were his one counsel 
to literary aspirants, who, according as 
they took it, are now bearded and pros- 
perous or shaven and on the rates. To 
shave costs threepence, another threepence 
for loss of time, nearly ten pounds a year, 
three hundred pounds since Pym’s chin 
first bristled. With his beard he could 
have bought an annuity or a cottage in 
the country, he could have had a wife and 
children and driven his dog-cart and been 
made a church-warden. All gone, all 
shaved, and for what ? When he asked 
this question he would move his hand 
across his chin with a sigh, and so, bravely 
to the barber’s. 

Pym was at present suffering from an 
ailment that had spread him out on that 



Tommy and Grizel 


sofa again and again, acute disinclination 
to work. 

Meanwhile all the world was waiting 
for his new tale. So the publishers, two 
little round men, have told him. They 
have blustered, they have fawned, they 
have-asked each other out to talk it over 
behind the door. 

Has he any idea of what the story is to 
be about ? 

He has no idea. 

Then at least, Pym, excellent Pym, sit 
down and dip, and let us see what will 
happen. 

He declined to do even that. While all 
the world waited, this was Pym’s ultima- 
tum : 

“I shall begin the damned thing at eight 
o’clock.” 

Outside, the fog kept changing at in- 
tervals from black to white, as lazily from 
white to black (the monster blinking), 
there was not a sound from the street save 
of pedestrians tapping with their sticks 
on the pavement as they moved forward 
warily, afraid of an embrace with the un- 
known ; it might have been a city of blind 
beggars, one of them a boy. 

At eight o’clock Pym rose with a groan 
and sat down in his stocking soles to write 
his delicious tale. He was now alone. But 
though his legs were wound round his 
waste-paper basket, and he dipped often 
and loudly in the saucer like one ringing 
at the door of Fancy, he could not get the 
idea that would set him going. He was 
still dipping for inspiration when T. San- 
dys, who had been told to find the second 
floor for himself, knocked at the door and 
entered, quaking. 

“ I remember it vividly,” Pym used to 
say when questioned in the after years 
about this, his first sight of Tommy, “ and 
I hesitate to decide which impressed me 
more, the richness of his voice, so remark- 
able in a boy of sixteen, or his serene 
countenance with its noble forehead, be- 
hind which nothing base could lurk.” 

Pym, Pym! it is such as you that makes 
the writing of biography difficult. The 
richness of Tommy’s voice could not have 
struck you, for at that time it was a some- 
what squeaky voice, and as for the noble 
forehead behind which nothing base could 
lurk, how could you say that, Pym, you 
who had a noble forehead yourself ? 


No, all that Pym saw was a pasty-faced 
boy sixteen years old and of an appear- 
ence mysteriously plain ; hair light brown 
and waving defiance to the brush, nothing 
startling about him but the expression 
of his face, which was almost fearsomely 
solemn and apparently unchangeable ; 
he wore his Sunday blacks, of which the 
trousers might with advantage have bor- 
rowed from the sleeves, and he was so 
nervous that he had to wet his lips before 
he could speak. He had left the door 
ajar for a private reason, but Pym, mis- 
understanding, thought he did it to fly the 
more readily if anything was flung at him ; 
so he must be a printer’s devil. 

Pym had a voice that shook his mantel- 
piece ornaments ; he was all on the same 
scale as his ink-pot. “ Your Christian 
name, boy ?” he roared, hopefully, for it 
was thus he sometimes got the idea that 
started him. 

“ Thomas,” replied the boy. 

Pym gave him a look of disgust. “ You 
may go,” he said. But when he looked 
up presently, Thomas was still there. He 
was not only there but whistling, a short 
encouraging whistle that seemed to be 
directed at the door ; he stopped quickly 
when Pym looked up, but during the re- 
mainder of the interview he emitted this 
whistle at intervals, always with that anx- 
ious glance at his friend, the door, and its 
strained joviality was in odd contrast with 
his solemn face, like a cheery tune played 
on the church organ. 

“Begone ! ” cried Pym. 

“ My full name,” explained Tommy, 
who was speaking the English correctly, 
but with a Scot’s accent, “ is Thomas 
Sandys. And fine you know who that is,” 
he added, exasperated by Pym’s indiffer- 
ence, “I’m the T. Sandys that answered 
your advertisement.” 

Pym knew who he was now. “ You 
young ruffian,” he gasped, “ I never 
dreamt that you would come ! ” 

“ I have your letter engaging me in 
my pocket,” said Tommy, boldly, and he 
laid it on the table. Pym surveyed it and 
him in comic dismay, then with a sudden 
thought produced nearly a dozen letters 
from a drawer and planted them down be- 
side the other. It was now his turn to 
look triumphant and Tommy aghast. 

Pym’s letters were all addressed from 


Tommy and Grizel 


the Dubb of Prosen Farm, near Thrums, 
N. B., to different advertisers, care of a 
London agency, and were Tommy’s an- 
swers to the “ wants ” in a London news- 
paper which had found its way to the far 
N orth. “XYZ" was in need of a chemist’s 
assistant, and from his earliest years, said 
one of the letters, chemistry had been the 
study of studies for T. Sandy s. He was 
glad to read, was T. Sandys, that one 
who did not object to long hours would 
be preferred, for it seemed to him that 
those who objected to long hours did not 
really love their work, their heart was not 
in it, and only where the heart is, can the 
treasure be found. 

“123 ” had a vacancy for a page-boy; 
“ Glasgow Man” for a photographer ; page- 
boy must not be over fourteen, photogra- 
pher must not be under twenty. “ I am a 
little over fourteen, but I look less,” wrote 
T. Sandys to “ 123 ” ; “I am a little under 
twenty,” he wrote to “ Glasgow Man,” “but 
I look more. ” His heart was in the work. 

To be a political organizer ! If “ H 
and H,” who advertised for one only knew 
how eagerly the undersigned desired to 
devote his life to political organizing ! 

In answer to “ Scholastic’s ” advertise- 
ment for janitor in a boys’ school, T. 
Sandys begged to submit his name for 
consideration. 

Undoubtedly the noblest letter was the 
one applying for the secretaryship of a 
charitable society, salary to begin at once, 
but the candidate selected must deposit 
one hundred pounds. The application 
was noble in its offer to make the work 
a labor of love, and almost nobler in its 
argument that the hundred pounds was 
unnecessary. 

“ Rex ” had a vacancy in his drapery 
department. T. Sandys had made a 
unique study of drapery. 

Lastly “Anon” wanted an amanuensis. 
“Salary,” said “Anon,” who seemed to be 
a humorist, “ salary large but uncertain.” 
He added, with equal candor, “ Drudgery 
great, but to an intelligent man the pick- 
ings may be considerable.” Pickings! 
Is there a finer word in the language ? 
T. Sandys had felt that he was particu- 
larly good at pickings. But amanuensis ? 
The thing was unknown to him, no one 
on the farm could tell him what it was. 
But never mind. His heart was in it. 


All this correspondence had produced 
one reply, the letter on which Tommy’s 
hand still rested. It was a brief note, 
signed' O. P. Pym, and engaging Mr. 
Sandys on his own recommendation “If 
he really felt quite certain that his heart 
(treasure included) was in the work.” So 
far good, Tommy had thought when he 
received this answer, but there was noth- 
ing in it to indicate the nature of the work, 
nothing to show whether O. P. Pym was 
“Scholastic,” or “123,” or “Rex,” or any 
other advertiser in particular. Stop, there 
was a postscript : “ I need not go into 
details about your duties, as you assure 
me you are so well acquainted with them, 
but before you join me please send (in 
writing) a full statement of what you think 
they are.” 

There were delicate reasons why Mr. 
Sandys could not do that, but, oh, he was 
anxious to be done with farm labor, so he 
decided to pack and risk it. The letter 
said plainly that he was engaged ; what 
for he must find out slyly when he came 
to London. So he had put his letter 
firmly on Pym’s table, but it was a stag- 
gerer to find that gentleman in possession 
of the others. 

One of these was Pym’s by right, the 
remainder were a humorous gift from the 
agent who was accustomed to sift the 
correspondence of his clients. Pym had 
chuckled over them and written a reply 
that he flattered himself would stump the 
boy, then he had unexpectedly come into 
funds (he found a forgotten check while 
searching his old pockets for tobacco- 
crumbs), and in that glory T. Sandys es- 
caped his memory. Result, that they were 
now face to face. 

A tiny red spot, not noticeable before, 
now appeared in Tommy’s eyes. It was 
never there except when he was deter- 
mined to have his way. Pym, my friend, 
yes, and everyone of you who is destined 
to challenge Tommy, ’ware that red light. 

“ Well, which am I ? ” demanded Pym, 
almost amused, Tommy was so obviously 
in a struggle with the problem. 

The saucer and the blank pages told 
nothing. “Whichever you are,” the boy 
answered, heavily, “ it’s not herding nor 
foddering cattle, and so long as it’s not 
that, I’ll put my heart in it, and where 
the heart is, there the treasure ” 


Tommy and Grizel 


He suddenly remembered that his host 
must be acquainted with the sentiment. 

Easy-going Pym laughed, then said, 
irritably, “ Of what use could a mere boy 
be to me ? ” 

“Then it’s not the page-boy!” ex- 
claimed Tommy, thankfully. 

“ Perhaps I am ‘Scholastic,’ ” suggested 
Pym. 

“ No,” said Tommy, after a long study 
of his face. 

Pym followed this reasoning, and said, 
touchily, “ Many a schoolmaster has a red 
face.” 

“Not that kind of redness,” explained 
Tommy, deliberately. 

“I am ‘H and H’,” said Pym. 

“You forget you wrote to me as one 
person,” replied Tommy. 

“ So I did. That was because I am the 
chemist, and I must ask you, Thomas, for 
your certificate.” Tommy believed this 
time, and Pym triumphantly poured him- 
self a glass of whiskey, spilling some of it 
on his dressing-gown. 

“Not you,” said Tommy, quickly, “ a 
chemist has a steady hand.” 

“ Confound you ! ” cried Pym, “ what 
sort of a boy is this ? ” 

“ If you had been the draper you 
would have wiped the drink off your gown,” 
continued Tommy, thoughtfully, “ and if 
you had been ‘ Glasgow Man ’ you would 
have sucked it off, and if you had been 
the ‘ Charitable Society’ you wouldn’t 
swear in company.” He flung out his 
hand. “ I’ll tell you who you are,” he 
said, sternly, “ you’re ‘Anon.’ ” 

Under this broadside Pym succumbed. 
He sat down feebly. “ Right,” he said, 
with a humorous groan, “ and I’ll tell you 
who you are — I am afraid you are my 
amanuensis ! ” 

Tommy immediately whistled, a louder 
and more glorious note than before. 

“Don’t be so cocky,” cried Pym in 
sudden rebellion. “You are only my 
amanuensis if you can tell me what that 
is. If you can’t — out you go.” 

He had him at last ! 

Not he ! 

“ An amanuensis,” said Tommy, calm- 
ly, “ is one who writes to dictation. Am 
I to bring in my box ? it’s at the door.” 

This made Pym sit down again. “You 
didn’t know what an amanuensis was 


when you answered my advertisement,” 
he said. 

“As soon as I got to London,” Tommy 
answered, “ I went into a bookseller’s shop 
pretending I wanted to buy a dictionary, 
and I looked the word up.” 

“Bring in your box,” Pym said, with a 
groan. 

But it was now Tommy’s turn to hesi- 
tate. “Have you noticed,” he asked, 
awkwardly, “ that I sometimes whistle ? ” 

“ Don’t tell me,” said Pym, “ that you 
have a dog out there.” 

“ It’s not a dog,” Tommy replied, cau- 
tiously. 

Pym had resumed his seat at the table 
and was once more toying with his pen. 
“Open the door,” he commanded, “and 
let me see what you have brought with 
you.” 

Tommy obeyed gingerly, and then Pym 
gaped, for what the open door revealed to 
him was a tiny roped box, with a girl of 
twelve sitting on it. She was dressed in 
some dull-colored winsey, and looked cold 
and patient and lonely, and as she saw the 
big man staring at her she struggled in 
alarm to her feet and could scarce stand 
on them. Tommy was looking apprehen- 
sively from her to Pym. 

“Good God, boy,” roared Pym, “are 
you married ? ” 

“ No,” cried Tommy in agony, “ she’s 
my sister, and we’re orphans, and did you 
think I could have the heart to leave El- 
speth behind ? ” He took her stoutly by 
the hand. 

“And he never will marry,” said little 
Elspeth, almost fiercely ; “ will you, 

Tommy?” 

“ Never ! ” said Tommy, patting her 
and glaring at Pym. 

But Pym would not have it; “ Married,” 
he shouted, “magnificent ! ” and he dipped 
exultantly, for he had got his idea at last. 
Forgetting even that he had an amanuensis 
he wrote on and on and on. 

“He smells o’ drink,” Elspeth whis- 
pered. 

“All the better,” replied Tommy, cheer- 
ily. “ Make yourself at home, Elspeth, 
he’s the kind I can manage. Was there 
ever a kind I couldna manage ? ” he whis- • 
pered, top-heavy with conceit. 

“There was Grizel,” Elspeth said, rather 
thoughtlessly, and then Tommy frowned. 


Tommy and Grizel 


CHAPTER II 

THE SEARCH FOR THE TREASURE 

IX years afterward Tom- 
my was a famous man, as 
I hope you do not need to 
be told, but you may be 
wondering how it came 
about. The whole question, 
in Pym’s words, resolves itself into how the 
solemn little devil got to know so much 
about women. It made the world marvel 
when they learned his age, but no one was 
quite so staggered as Pym, who had seen 
him daily for all those years, and been 
damning him for his indifference to the 
sex during the greater part of them. 

It began while he was still no more than 
an amanuensis, sitting with his feet in the 
waste-paper basket, Pym dictating from the 
sofa and swearing when the words would 
not come unless he was perpendicular. 
Among the duties of this amanuensis was 
to remember the name of the heroine, her 
appearance and other personal details, for 
Pym constantly forgot them in the night, 
and he had to go searching back through 
his pages for them, cursing her so horribly 
that Tommy signed to Elspeth to retire to 
her tiny bedroom at the top of the house. 
He was always most careful of Elspeth, 
and with the first pound he earned he in- 
sured his life, leaving all to her, but told 
her nothing about it, lest she should think 
it meant his early death. As she grew 
older he also got good dull books for her 
from a library, and gave her a piano on the 
hire system and taught her many things 
about life, very carefully selected from his 
own discoveries. 

Elspeth out of the way he could give 
Pym all the information wanted. “ Her 
name is Felicity,” he would say at the right 
moment, “she has curly brown hair in 
which the sun strays and a blushing neck, 
and her eyes are like blue lakes.” 

“ Height,” roared Pym, “ have I men- 
tioned it ?” 

“ No, but she is about five feet six.” 

“ How the — could you know that ? ” 

“You tell Percy’s height in his stocking 
soles, and when she reached to his mouth 
and kissed him she had to stand on her 
tiptoes so to do.” 


Tommy said this in a most business-like 
tone, but could not help smacking his lips. 
He smacked them again when he had to 
write, 

“ Have no fear, little woman, I am by 
your side.” 

Or, -“What a sweet child you are.” 

Pym had probably fallen into the way 
of making the Percys revel in such epi- 
thets because he could not remember the 
girl’s name, but this delicious use of the 
diminutive, as addressed to full-grown 
ladies, went to Tommy’s head. His sol- 
emn face kept his secret, but he had some 
narrow escapes, as once when saying 
good-night to Elspeth he kissed her on 
mouth, eyes, nose, and ears, and said, 
“ Shall I tuck you in, little woman ? ” 
He came to himself with a start. 

“ I forgot,” he said, hurriedly, and got 
out of the room without telling what he 
had forgotten. 

Pym’s publishers knew their man, and 
their arrangement with him was that he 
was paid on completion of the tale. But 
always before he reached the middle he 
struck for what they called his honorari- 
um, and this troubled them, for the tale 
was appearing week by week as it was 
written. If they were obdurate he sud- 
denly concluded his story in such words 
as these : 

“ Several years have passed since these 
events took place, and the scene changes 
to a lovely garden by the bank of old 
Father Thames. A young man sits by 
the soft-flowing stream, and he is calm as 
the scene itself, for the storm has passed 
away, and Percy (for it is no other) has 
found an anchorage. As he sits musing 
over the past, Felicity steals out by the 
French window and puts her soft arms 
round his neck. 1 My little wife ! ’ he 
murmurs. The End , unless you pay up 
by messenger .” 

This last line, which was not meant 
for the world (but little would Pym have 
cared though it had been printed), usu- 
ally brought his employers to their knees, 
and then, as Tommy advanced in experi- 
ence, came the pickings, for Pym, with 
money in his pockets, had important en- 
gagements round the corner and risked 
intrusting his amanuensis with the writ- 
ing of the next instalment, “ all except the 
bang at the end.” 



Tommy and Grizel 


Smaller people in Tommy’s state of 
mind would have hurried straight to the 
love-passages, but he saw the danger and 
forced his Pegasus away from them. “ Do 
your day’s toil first,” he may be conceived 
saying to that animal, “and at evenfall I 
shall let you out to browse.” So, with this 
reward in front, he devoted many pages 
to the dreary adventures of pretentious 
males, and even found a certain pleasure 
in keeping the lady waiting. But as soon 
as he reached her he lost his head again. 

“ Oh, you beauty ! oh, you small pet ! ” 
he said to himself, with solemn transport. 

As the artist in him was stirred, great 
problems presented themselves ; for in- 
stance, in certain circumstances was dar- 
ling or little one the better phrase ! Dar- 
ling in solitary grandeur is more pregnant 
of meaning than little one, but little has 
a flavor of the patronizing which darling 
perhaps lacks. He wasted many sheets 
over such questions, but they were in his 
pocket when Pym or Elspeth opened the 
door. It is wonderful how much you can 
conceal between the touch on the handle 
and the opening of the door if your heart 
is in it. 

Despite this fine practice, however, he 
was the shyest of mankind in the presence 
of women, and this shyness grew upon 
him with the years. Was it because he 
never tried to uncork himself ? Oh, no ! 
It was about this time that he one day 
put his arm round Clara, the servant, not 
passionately, but with deliberation, as if 
he were making an experiment with ma- 
chinery. He then listened as if to hear 
Clara ticking. He wrote an admirable 
love-letter, warm, dignified, sincere, to no- 
body in particular, and carried it about in 
his pocket in readiness. But in love- 
making, as in the other arts, those do it 
best who cannot tell how it is done, and 
he was always stricken with a palsy when 
about to present that letter. It seemed 
that he was only able to speak to ladies 
when they were not there. Well, if he 
could not speak he thought the more ; he 
thought so profoundly that in time the 
heroines of Pym ceased to thrill him. 

This was because he had found out that 
they were not flesh and blood, but he did 
not delight in his discovery ; it horrified 
him, for what he wanted was the old thrill. 
To make them human so that they could 


be his little friends again, nothing less was 
called for. This meant slaughter here 
and there of the great Pym’s brainwork, 
and Tommy tried to keep his hands off, 
but his heart was in it. In Pym’s pages 
the ladies were the most virtuous and 
proper of their sex (though dreadfully per- 
secuted), but he merely told you so at the 
beginning, and now and again afterward 
to fill up, and then allowed them to act 
with what may be called rashness, so that 
the story did not really suffer. Before 
Tommy was nineteen he changed all that. 
Out went this because she would not have 
done it, and that because she could not 
have done it ; fathers might now have 
taken a lesson from T. Sandys in the up- 
bringing of their daughters ; he even 
sternly struck out the diminutives. With 
a pen in his hand and woman in his head 
he had such noble thoughts that his tears 
of exaltation damped the pages as he 
wrote, and the ladies must have been as- 
tounded as well as proud to see what they 
were turning into. 

That was Tommy with a pen in his 
hand and a handkerchief hard by, but it 
was another Tommy, who, when the finest 
bursts were over, sat back in his chair and 
rested. The lady was consistent now, 
and he would think about her and think 
and think, until concentration, which is a 
pair of blazing eyes, seemed to draw her 
out of the fool’s-cap to his side, and then 
he and she sported in a way forbidden in 
the tale. While he sat there with eyes riv- 
eted he had her to dinner at a restaurant, 
and took her up the river, and called her 
“little woman,” and when she held up her 
mouth he said, tantalizingly, that she must 
wait until he had finished his cigar. This 
queer delight enjoyed, back he popped 
her into the story, where she was again 
the vehicle for such glorious sentiments 
that Elspeth, to whom he read the best of 
them, feared he was becoming too good to 
live. 

In the meantime the great penny pub- 
lic were slowly growing restive, and at 
last the two little round men called on 
Pym to complain that he was falling off, 
and Pym turned them out of doors and 
then sat down heroically to do what he 
had not done for two decades, to read his 
latest work. 

“ Elspeth, go up-stairs to your room,” 


Tommy and Grizel 


whispered Tommy, and then he folded 
his arms proudly. He should have been 
in a tremble, but latterly he had often felt 
that he must burst if he did not soon read 
some of his bits to Pym, more especially 
the passages about the hereafter ; also the 
opening of Chapter Seventeen. 

At first Pym’s only comment was, “It 
is the same old drivel as before ; what 
more can they want ? ” 

But presently he looked up, puzzled. 
w Is this chapter yours or mine ? ” he de- 
manded. 

“ It is about half and half,” said Tom- 
my. 

“ Is mine the first half ? Where does 
yours begin ? ” 

“ That is not exactly what I mean,” 
explained Tommy, in a glow, but backing 
a little ; “ you wrote that chapter first, 
and then I — I ” 

“ You re-wrote it ! ” roared Pym, “ you 
dared to meddle with — ” He was speech- 
less with fury. 

“ I tried to keep my hand off,” Tommy 
said, with dignity, “but the thing had to 
be done, and they are human now.” 

“ Human ! who wants them to be hu- 
man ? The fiends seize you, boy, you have 
even been tinkering with my heroine’s per- 
sonal appearance ; what is this you have 
been doing to her nose? ” 

“ I turned it up slightly, that’s all,” said 
Tommy. 

“ I like them down,” roared Pym. 

“ I prefer them up,” said Tommy, stiffly. 

“ Where,” cried Pym, turning over the 
leaves in a panic, “ where is the scene in 
the burning house? ” 

“It’s out,” Tommy explained, “but 
there is a chapter in its place about — it’s 
mostly about the beauty of the soul be- 
ing everything, and mere physical beauty 
nothing. Oh, Mr. Pym, sit down and let 
me read it to you.” 

But Pym read it, and a great deal more, 
for himself. No wonder he stormed, for 
the impossible had been made not only 
consistent, but unreadable. The plot was 
lost for chapters, the characters no longer 
did anything, and then went and did some- 
thing else ; you were told instead how they 
did it ; you were not allowed to make up 
your own mind about them; you had to 
listen to the mind of T. Sandys ; he de- 
scribed and he analyzed ; the road he had 


tried to clear through the thicket was im- 
passable for chips. 

“ A few more weeks of this,” said Pym, 
“ and we should all three be turned out 
into the streets.” 

Tommy went to bed in an agony of 
mortification, but presently to his side 
came Pym. 

“Where did you copy this from?” he 
asked. “ ‘ It is when we are thinking of 
those we love that our noblest thoughts 
come to us, and the more worthy they are 
of our love the nobler the thought, hence 
it is that no one has done the greatest 
work who did not love God.’ ” 

“ I copied it from nowhere,” replied 
Tommy, fiercely; “it’s my own.” 

“ Well, it has nothing to do with the 
story, and so is only a blot on it, and I 
have no doubt the thing has been said 
much better before. Still, I suppose it is 
true.” 

“It’s true,” said Tommy; “and 
yet ” 

“ Go on. I want to know all about it.” 

“And yet,” Tommy said, puzzled, “ I’ve 
known noble thoughts come to me when 
I was listening to a brass band.” 

Pym chuckled. “ Funny things, noble 
thoughts,” he agreed. He read another 
passage : 

“ ‘ It was the last half hour of day when 
I was admitted with several others to look 
upon my friend’s dead face. A handker- 
chief had been laid over it. I raised the 
handkerchief. I know not what the oth- 
ers were thinking, but the last time we 
met he had told me something, it was not 
much, only that no woman had ever kissed 
him. It seemed to me that as I gazed 
the wistfulness came back to his face. I 
whispered to a woman who was present, 
and stooping over him she was about to 
— but her eyes were dry, and I stopped 
her. The handkerchief was replaced, and 
all left the room save myself. Again I 
raised the handkerchief. I cannot tell 
you how innocent he looked.’ ” 

“ Who was he? ” asked Pym. 

“ Nobody,” said Tommy, with some 
awe; “it just came to me. Do you no- 
tice how simple the wording is? It took 
me some time to make it so simple.” 

“ You are just nineteen, I think? ” 

“ Yes.” 

Pym looked at him wonderingly. 


Tommy and Grizel 


“Thomas,” he said, “you are a very 
queer little devil.” 

He also said, “ And it is possible you 
may find the treasure you are always talk- 
ing about. Don’t jump to the ceiling, my 
friend, because I say that ; I was once af- 
ter the treasure myself, and you can see 
whether I found it.” 

From about that time, on the chances 
that this mysterious treasure might spring 
up in the form of a new kind of flower, 
Pym zealously cultivated the ground, and 
Tommy had an industrious time of it. He 
was taken off his stories, which at once 
regained their elasticity, and put on to ex- 
ercises. 

“ If you have nothing to say on the sub- 
ject, say nothing,” was one of the new 
rules which few would have expected from 
Pym. Another was, “As soon as you can 
say what you think, and not what some 
other person has thought for you, you are 
on the way to being a remarkable man.” 

“ Without concentration, Thomas, you 
are lost ; concentrate though your coat- 
tails be on fire. 

“ Try your hand at description, and 
when you have done chortling over the 
result reduce the whole by half without 
missing anything out. 

“ Analyze your characters and their mo- 
tives at the prodigious length in which you 
revel, and then, my sonny, cut your analy- 
sis out. It is for your own guidance, not 
the reader’s. 

“ ‘ I have often noticed,’ you are always 
saying. The story has nothing to do with 
you. Obliterate yourself. I see that will 
be your stiffest job. 

“ Stop preaching. It seems to me the 
pulpit is where you should look for the 
treasure. Nineteen, and you are already 
as didactic as seventy.” 

And so on. 

Over his exercises Tommy was now en- 
grossed for so long a period that as he 
sits there you may observe his legs slowly 
lengthening and the coming of his beard. 
No, his legs lengthened as he sat with 
his feet in the basket, but I feel sure that 
his beard burst through prematurely some 
night when he was thinking too hard about 
the ladies. 

There were no ladies in the exercises, for 
despite their altercation about noses Pym 
knew that on this subject Tommy’s mind 


was a blank. But he recognized the sex’s 
importance, and, becoming possessed once 
more of a black coat, marched his pupil 
into the somewhat shoddy drawing-rooms 
still open to him, and there ordered Tommy 
to be fascinated for his future good. But 
it was as it had always been. Tommy 
sat white and speechless and apparently 
bored, could not even say “You sing 
with so much expression,” when the lady 
at the piano-forte had finished. 

“ Shyness I could pardon ? ” the exas- 
perated Pym would roar, “but want of in- 
terest is almost immoral. At your age the 
blood would have been coursing through 
my veins. Love! You are incapable of 
it. There is not a drop of sentiment in 
your frozen carcass.” 

“Can I help that?” growled Tommy. 
It was an agony to him even to speak 
about women. 

“If you can’t,” said Pym, “all is over 
with you. An artist without sentiment is 
a painter without colors. Young man, I 
fear you are doomed.” 

And Tommy believed him and quaked. 
He had the most gallant struggles with 
himself. He even set his teeth and joined 
a dancing class, though neither Pym nor 
Elspeth knew of it, and it never showed 
afterward in his legs. In appearance he 
was now beginning to be the Sandys of the 
photographs, a little over the middle height 
and rather heavily built ; nothing to make 
you uncomfortable until you saw his face. 
That solemn countenance never responded 
when he laughed, and stood coldly by when 
he was on fire ; he might have winked for 
an eternity and still the onlooker must 
have thought himself mistaken. In his 
boyhood the mask had descended scarce 
below his mouth, for there was a dimple 
in the chin to put you at your ease, but 
now the short brown beard had come, and 
he was forever hidden from the world. 

He had the dandy’s tastes for superb 
neckties, velvet jackets, and he got the ties 
instead of dining; he panted for the jacket, 
knew all the shop-windows it was in, but 
for years denied himself with a moan so 
that he might buy pretty things for Elspeth. 
When eventually he got it, Pym’s friends 
ridiculed him. When he saw how ill his 
face matched it he ridiculed himself. Often 
when Tommy was feeling that now at last 
the ladies must come to heel, he saw his 


Tommy and Grizel 


face suddenly in a mirror and all the spirit 
went out of him. But still he clung to his 
velvet jacket. 

I see him in it stalking through the ter- 
rible dances, a heroic figure at last. He 
shuddered every time he found himself on 
one leg, he got sternly into everybody’s 
way, he was the butt of the little noodle of 
an instructor ; all the social tortures he 
endured grimly in the hope that at last the 
cork would come out. Then though there 
were all kinds of girls in the class, merry, 
sentimental, practical, coquettish, prudes, 
there was no kind, he felt, whose heart he 
could not touch ; in love-making, as in the 
favorite Thrums game of the dambrod, 
there are sixty-one openings and he knew 
them all. Yet at the last dance as at the 
first the universal opinion of his partners 
(shop-girls mostly from the large millinery 
establishments, who had to fly like Cinder- 
ellas when the clock struck a certain hour) 
was that he kept himself to himself, and 
they were too much the lady to make up 
to a gentleman who so obviously did not 
want them. 

Pym encouraged his friends to jeer at 
Tommy’s want of interest in the sex, think- 
ing it a way of goading him to action. One 
evening, the bottles circulating, they men- 
tioned one Dolly, goddess at some bar, as 
a fit instructress for him. Coarse pleasan- 
tries passed, but for a time he writhed in 
silence, then burst upon them indignantly 
for their unmanly smirching of a woman’s 
character, and swept out, leaving them a 
little ashamed. That was very like Tommy. 

But presently a desire came over him 
to see this girl, and it came because they 
had hinted such dark things about her. 
That was like him also. 

There was probably no harm in Dolly, 
though it is man’s proud right to question 
it in exchange for his bitters. She was 
tall and willowy and stretched her neck 
like a swan and returned you your change 
with disdainful languor; to call such a 
haughty beauty Dolly was one of the minor 
triumphs for man, and Dolly they all called 
her, except the only one who could have 
given an artistic justification for it. 

This one was a bearded stranger who, 
when he knew that Pym and his friends 
were elsewhere, would enter the bar with 
a cigar in his mouth and ask for a whiskey 
and water, which was heroism again, for 


smoking was ever detestable to him and 
whiskey more offensive than quinine. But 
these things are expected of you, and by 
asking for the whiskey you get into talk 
with Dolly, that is to say, you tell her 
several times what you want, and when 
she has served every other body you get 
it. The commercial must be served first ; 
in the bar-room he blocks the way like 
royalty in the street. There is a crown 
for us all somewhere. 

Dolly seldom heard the bearded one’s 
“ Good-evening”; she could not possibly 
have heard the “Dear,” for though it was 
there it remained behind his teeth. She 
knew him only as the stiff man who got 
separated from his glass without com- 
plaining, and at first she put this down to 
forgetfulness and did nothing, so that he 
could go away without drinking, but by 
and by, whenever he left his tumbler, cun- 
ningly concealed behind a water-bottle or 
temptingly in front of a commercial, she 
restored it to him, and there was a twinkle 
in her eye. 

“You little rogue, so you see through 
me!” Surely it was an easy thing to 
say, but what he did say was “Thank 
you.” Then to himself he said, “ Ass, ass, 
ass ! ” 

Sitting on the padded seat that ran the 
length of the room, and surreptitiously 
breaking his cigar against the cushions to 
help it on its way to an end, he brought 
his intellect to bear on Dolly at a distance 
and soon had a better knowledge of her 
than could be claimed by those who had 
Dollied her for years. He also wove ro- 
mances about her, some of them of too 
lively a character, and others so noble 
and sad and beautiful that the tears came 
to his eyes and Dolly thought he had 
been drinking. He could not have said 
whether he would prefer her to be good 
or bad. 

These were but his leisure moments, for 
during the long working hours he was still 
at the exercises, toiling fondly and right 
willing to tear himself asunder to get at 
the trick of writing. So he passed from 
exercises to the grand experiment. 

It was to be a tale, for there, they had 
taken for granted, lay the treasure. Pym 
was most considerate at this time, and 
mentioned woman with an apology. 

“ I have kept away from them in the 


Tommy and Grizel 


exercises,” he said in effect, “ because it 
would have been useless (as well as cruel) 
to force you to labor on a subject so un- 
congenial to you, and for the same reason 
I have decided that it is to be a tale of 
adventure, in which the heroine need be 
little more than a beautiful sack of coals 
which your cavalier carries about with 
him on his left shoulder. I am afraid we 
must have her to that extent, Thomas, but 
I am not asking much of you ; dump her 
down as often as you like.” 

And Thomas did his dogged best, the 
red light in his eye ; though he had not 
and never could have had the smallest 
instinct for writing stories, he knew to the 
finger-tips how it is done, but forever he 
would have gone on breaking all the rules 
of the game. How he wrestled with him- 
self ! Sublime thoughts came to him 
(nearly all about that girl) and he drove 
them away, for he knew they beat only 
against the march of his story, and, what- 
ever befall, the story must march. Re- 
lentlessly he followed in the track of his 
men, pushing the dreary dogs on to deeds 
of valor. He tried making the lady hu- 
man, and then she would not march ; she 
sat still and he talked about her, he dumped 
her down and soon he was yawning. This 
weariness was what alarmed him most, for 
well he understood that there could be no 
treasure where the work was not engross- 
ing play, and he doubted no more than 
Pym that for him the treasure was in the 
tale or nowhere. Had he not been sharp- 
ening his tools in this belief for years ? 
Strange to reflect now, that all the time he 
was hacking and sweating at that story 
(the last he ever attempted) it was only 
marching toward the waste-paper basket. 

He had a fine capacity, as has been 
hinted, for self-deception, and in time, of 
course, he found a way of dodging the 
disquieting truth. This, equally, of course, 
was by yielding to his impulses. He al- 
lowed himself an hour a day, when Pym 
was absent, in which he wrote the story as 
it seemed to want to write itself, and then 
he cut this piece out, which could be done 
quite easily, as it consisted only of moraliz- 
ings. Thus was his day brightened, and 
with this relaxation to look forward to he 
plodded on at his proper work, delving so 
hard that he could avoid asking himself 
why he was still delving. What shall we 


say ? he was digging for the treasure in 
an orchard, and every now and again he 
came out of his hole to pluck an apple, 
but though the apple was so sweet to the 
mouth, it never struck him that the treas- 
ure might be growing overhead. At first 
he destroyed the fruit of his stolen hour, 
and even after he took to carrying it about 
fondly in his pocket and to re-writing it in 
a splendid new form that had come to 
him just as he was stepping into bed, he 
continued to conceal it from his overseer’s 
eyes. And still he thought all was over 
with him when Pym said the story did not 
march. 

“ It is a dead thing,” Pym would roar, 
flinging down the manuscript, “a dead 
thing because the stakes your man is 
playing for, a woman’s love, is less than a 
wooden counter to you. You are a fine 
piece of mechanism, my solemn-faced don, 
but you are a watch that won’t go because 
you are not wound up. Nobody can 
wind the artist up except a chit of a girl, 
and how you are ever to get one to take 
pity on you, only the Gods who look 
after men with a want can tell.” 

“It becomes more impenetrable every 
day,” he said. “ No use your sitting there 
tearing yourself to bits. Out into the 
street with you. I suspend these sittings 
until you can tell me you have kissed a 
girl.” 

He was still saying this sort of thing 
when the famous “Letters” were pub- 
lished, T. Sandys author. “ Letters to a 
Young Man about to be Married ” was the 
full title, and another almost as applica- 
ble would have been “ Bits Cut out of 
a Story because they Prevented its March- 
ing.” If you have any memory you do 
not need to be told how that splendid 
study, so ennobling, so penetrating, of 
woman at her best, took the town. Tom- 
my woke a famous man, and except El- 
speth no one was more pleased than big- 
hearted, hopeless Pym. 

“ But how the has it all come 

about ! ” he kept roaring. 

“A woman can be anything that the 
man who loves her would have her be,” 
says the “ Letters,” and “Oh,” said wom- 
an everywhere, “if all men had the same 
ideal of us as Mr. Sandys ! ” 

“ To meet Mr. T. Sandys.” Leaders 
of society wrote it on their invitation 


Tommy and Grizel 


cards. Their daughters a-thirst for a new 
sensation thrilled at the thought, “Will 
he talk to us as nobly as he writes ! ” and 
oh, how willing he was to do it, especially 
if their noses were slightly turned up. 


CHAPTER III 


SANDYS ON WOMEN 



May I have it, 


AN you kindly tell the 
name of the book I want ?” 

It is the commonest 
question asked at the cir- 
culating library by dainty 
ladies just out of the car- 
riage, and the librarian after looking them 
over can usually tell. In the days we 
have now to speak of, however, he an- 
swered, without looking them over : 

“ Sandys’s Letters.” 

“ Ah, yes, of course, 
please ? ” 

“ I regret to find that it is out.” 

Then the lady looked naughty. “ Why 
don’t you have two copies ? ” she pouted. 

“ Madam,” said the librarian, “ we have 
a thousand.” 

A small and very timid girl of eighteen, 
with a neat figure that shrank from ob- 
servation, although already aware that it 
looked best in gray, was there to drink in 
this music and carried it home in her heart. 
She was Elspeth, and that dear heart was 
almost too full at this time ; I hesitate 
whether to tell or to conceal how it even 
created a disturbance in no less a place 
than the House of Commons. She was 
there with Mrs. Jerry, and the thing was 
recorded in the papers of the period in 
these blasting words : “ The Home Sec- 
retary was understood to be quoting a 
passage from ‘ Letters to a Young Man,’ 
but we failed to catch its drift owing to an 
unseemly interruption from the ladies’ gal- 
lery.” 

“But what was it you cried out?” 
Tommy asked Elspeth when She thought 
she had told him everything. (Like all 
true women, she always began in the mid- 
dle.) 

“ Oh, Tommy, have I not told you ? 
I cried out, ‘I’m his sister.’ ” 

Thus, owing to Elspeth’s behavior, it 
can never be known which was the pas- 


sage quoted in the House, but we may be 
sure of one thing, that it did the House 
good. That book did everybody good, 
even Pym could only throw off its benefi- 
cent effects by a tremendous effort, and 
young men about to be married used 
to ask at the bookshops, not for the 
“Letters,” but simply for “ Sandys on 
Woman,” acknowledging Tommy as the 
authority on the subject, like Mill on 
Jurisprudence, or Thomson and Tait on 
the Differential Calculus. Controversies 
raged about it. Some thought he asked 
too much of man, some thought he saw 
too much in women ; there was a fear 
that young people, knowing at last how 
far short they fell of what they ought to 
be, might shrink from the matrimony that 
must expose them to each other, now 
that they had Sandys to guide them, and 
the persons who had simply married and 
risked it (and it was astounding what a 
number of them there proved to be) wrote 
to the papers suggesting that he might 
yield a little in the next edition. But 
Sandys remained firm. 

At first they -took for granted that he 
was a very aged gentleman ; he had indeed 
hinted at this in the text, and when the 
truth came ‘out (“And just fancy, he is 
not even married ! ”) the enthusiasm was 
doubled. “Not engaged!” they cried, 
“don’t tell that to me. No unmarried 
man could have written such a eulogy of 
marriage without being on the brink of it.” 
Perhaps she was dead? It ran through 
the town that she was dead. Some knew 
which cemetery. 

The very first lady Mr. Sandys ever took 
in to dinner mentioned this rumor to him, 
not with vulgar curiosity; but delicately, 
with a hint of sympathy in waiting, and it 
must be remembered, in fairness to Tom- 
my, that all artists love sympathy. This 
sympathy uncorked him, and our Tommy 
could flow comparatively freely at last. 
Observe the delicious change. 

“ Has that story got abroad,” he said, 
simply. “ The matter is one which, I need 
not say, I have never mentioned to a soul.” 

“ Of course not,” the lady said, and 
waited eagerly. 

If Tommy had been an expert he might 
have turned the conversation to brighter 
topics, but he was not; there had already 
been long pauses, and in dinner talk it is 



Tommy and Grizel 


perhaps allowable to fling on any faggot 
rather than let the fire go out. “It is 
odd that I should be talking of it now,” 
he said, musingly. 

“I suppose,” she said, gently, to bring 
him out of the reverie into which he had 
sunk, “ I suppose it happened some time 
ago?” 

“ Long, long ago,” he answered. Hav- 
ing written as an aged person he often 
found difficulty in remembering suddenly 
that he was two-and-twenty. 

“ But you are still a very young man.” 

“It seems long ago to me,” he said, 
with a sigh. 

“ Was she beautiful?” 

“ She was beautiful to my eyes.” 

“And as good I am sure as she was 
beautiful.” 

“Ah me!” said Tommy. 

His confidante was burning to know 
more and hoping they were being observed 
across the table, but she was a kind, senti- 
mental creature, though stout, or because 
of it, and she said, “ I am so afraid that 
my questions pain you.” 

“ No, no,” said Tommy, who was very, 
very happy. 

“ Was it very sudden? ” 

“Fever.” 

“Ah ! But I meant your attachment.” 

“We met and we loved,” he said, with 
gentle dignity. 

“That is the true way,” said the lady. 

“It is the only way,” he said, decisive- 

•y- 

“ Mr. Sandys, you have been so good, 
I wonder if you would tell me her name? ” 

“ Mildred,” he said with emotion. Pres- 
ently he looked up. “ It is very strange 
to me,” he said, wonderingly, “ to find my- 
self saying these things to you who an hour 
ago were a complete stranger to me. But 
you are not like the other women.” 

“No, indeed! ” said the lady, warmly. 

“That,” he said, “must be why I tell 
you what I have never told to another 
human being. How mysterious are the 
workings of the heart.” 

“ Mr. Sandys,” said the lady, quite car- 
ried away, “no words of mine can convey 
to you the pride with which I hear you 
say that. Be assured that I shall respect 
your confidences.” She missed his next 
remark because she was wondering whether 
she dare ask him to come to dinner on the 


twenty-fifth, and then the ladies had to 
retire, and by the time he rejoined her he 
was as tongue-tied as at the beginning. 
The cork had not been extracted; it had 
been knocked into the bottle where it still 
often barred the way, and there was al- 
ways, as we shall see, a flavor of it in the 
wine. 

“You will get over it yet, the summer 
and the flowers will come to you again,” 
she managed to whisper to him kind- 
heartedly as -she was going. 

“ Thank you,” he said with that inscru- 
table face. It was far from his design to 
play a part, he had indeed had no design 
at all, but an opportunity for sentiment 
having presented itself, his mouth had 
opened as at a cherry. He did not laugh 
afterward even when he reflected how 
unexpectedly Mildred had come into his 
life, he thought of her rather with affec- 
tionate, regard, and pictured her as a tall 
slim girl in white. When he took a tall slim 
girl in white in to dinner he could not help 
saying, huskily : 

“You remind me of one who was a 
very dear friend of mine. I was much 
startled when you came into the room.” 

“You mean someone who is dead?” 
she asked, in awe-struck tones. 

“ Fever,” he said. 

“You think I am like her in appear- 
ance? ” 

“ In every way,” he said, dreamily, “the 
same sweet — pardon me, but it is very re- 
markable. Even the tones of the voice 
are the same. I suppose I ought not to 
ask your age?” 

“ I shall be twenty-one in August.” 

“ She would have been twenty-one in 
August had she lived,” Tommy said, with 
fervor. “ My dear young lady ” 

This was the aged gentleman again, but 
she did not wince; he soon found out 
that they expect authors to say the oddest 
things, and this proved to be a great help 
to him. 

“ My dear young lady, I feel that I 
know you very well.” 

“That,” she said, “ is only because I re- 
semble your friend outwardly. The real 
me (she was a bit of philosopher also) you 
cannot know at all.” 

He smiled sadly. “ Has it ever struck 
you,” he asked, “that you are very unlike 
other women?” 


Tommy and Grizel 


“ Oh, how ever could you have found 
that out?” she exclaimed, amazed. 

Almost before he knew how it came 
about he was on terms of very pleasant 
sentiment with this girl, for they now 
shared between them a secret that he had 
confided to no other. His face, which 
had been so much against him hitherto, 
was at last in his favor; it showed so 
plainly that when he looked at her more 
softly or held her hand longer than is cus- 
tomary, he was really thinking of that 
other, of whom she was the image. Or if 
it did not precisely show that, it suggested 
something or other of that nature which 
did just as well. There was a sweet some- 
thing between them which brought them 
together, and also kept them apart ; it al- 
lowed them to go a certain length, while 
it was also a reason why they could never, 
never exceed that distance ; and this was 
an ideal state for Tommy, who could be 
most loyal and tender so long as it was un- 
derstood that he meant nothing in partic- 
ular. She was the right kind of girl, too, 
and admired him the more (and perhaps 
went a step farther) because he remained 
so true to Mildred’s memory. 

You must not think him calculating 
and cold-blooded, for nothing could be 
less true to the fact. When not engaged, 
indeed, on his new work, he might waste 
some time planning scenes with exquisite 
ladies, in which he sparkled or had a hid- 
den sorrow (he cared not which); but 
these scenes seldom came to life. He 
preferred very pretty girls to be rather stu- 
pid (oh, the artistic instinct of the man !), 
but instead of keeping them stupid, as he 
wanted to do, he found himself trying to 
improve their minds. They screwed up 
their noses in the effort. Meaning to 
thrill the celebrated beauty, who had been 
specially invited to meet him, he devoted 
himself to a plain woman, for whose plain- 
ness a sudden pity had mastered him (for 
like all true worshippers of beauty in wom- 
en, he always showed best in the presence 
of plain ones). With the intention of be- 
ing a gallant knight to Lady I-Won’t-Tell- 
The-Name, a whim of the moment made 
him so stiff to her that she ultimately asked 
the reason ; and such a charmingly sad 
reason presented itself to him that she im- 
mediately invited him to her riverside party 
on Thursday week. He had the conver- 


sations and incidents of that party ready 
long before the day arrived; he altered 
them and polished them as other young 
gentlemen in the same circumstances over- 
haul their boating costumes ; but when he 
joined the party there was among them 
the children’s governess, and, seeing her 
slighted, his blood boiled, and he was her 
attendant for the afternoon. 

Elspeth was not at this pleasant jink in 
high life. She had been invited, but her 
ladyship had once let Tommy kiss her 
hand for the first and last time ; so he de- 
cided sternly that this was no place for 
Elspeth. When temptation was high he 
first locked Elspeth up, and then walked 
into it. 

With two in every three women he was 
still as shy as ever, but the third he walked 
triumphantly to the conservatory. She 
did no harm to his work, rather sent him 
back to it refreshed ; it was as if he were 
shooting the sentiment which other young 
men get rid of more gradually by begin- 
ning earlier, and there were such accumu- 
lations of it that I don’t know whether 
he ever made up on them. Punishment 
sought him in the night, when he dreamt 
constantly that he was married, to whom 
scarcely mattered ; he saw himself coming 
out of a church a married man, and the 
fright woke him up. But with the day- 
light came again his talent for dodging 
thoughts that were lying in wait, and he 
yielded as recklessly as before to every 
sentimental impulse. As illustration, take 
his humorous passage with Mrs. Jerry. 
Geraldine something was her name, but 
friends called her Mrs. Jerry. 

She was a wealthy widow, buxom, not 
a day over thirty when she was merry, 
which might be at inappropriate moments, 
as immediately after she had expressed a 
desire to lead the higher life. “ But I 
have a theory, my dear,” she said solemn- 
ly to Elspeth, “that no woman is able to 
do it who cannot see her own nose with- 
out the help of a mirror. ” She had taken 
a great fancy to Elspeth, and made many 
engagements with her and kept some of 
them, and the understanding was that she 
apprenticed herself to Tommy through 
Elspeth, he being too terrible to face by 
himself, or as Mrs. Jerry expressed it, “all 
nose.” So Tommy had seen very little 
of her and thought less until one day he 


Tommy and Grizel 


called by passionate request to sign her 
birthday-book, and heard himself propos- 
ing to her instead. 

For one thing it was twilight, and she 
had forgotten to ring for the lamps. That 
might have been enough, but there was 
more ; she read to him part of a letter in 
which her hand was solicited in marriage, 
“ and for the life of me,” said Mrs. Jerry, 
almost in tears, “ I cannot decide whether 
to say yes or no.” 

This put Tommy in a most awkward 
position. There are probably men who 
could have got out of it without proposing, 
but to him there seemed at the moment no 
other way open. The letter complicated 
matters also by beginning “ Dear Jerry” 
and saying “little Jerry” farther on, ex- 
pressions which stirred him strangely. 

“Why do you read this to me?” he 
asked in a voice that broke a little. 

“Because you are so wise,” she said. 
“ Do you mind? ” 

“Do I mind ! ” he exclaimed bitterly. 
(“Take care, you idiot !” he said to him- 
self.) 

“ I was only asking your advice. Is it 
too much ? ” 

“ Not at all. I am quite the right man 
to consult at such a moment, am I not !” 

It was said with profound meaning, but 
his face was as usual. 

“That is what I thought,” she said, in 
all good faith. 

“You do not even understand !” he 
cried, and he was also looking longingly 
at his hat. 

“Understand what ?” 

“Jerry,” he said, and tried to stop him- 
self, with the result that he added “ dear 
little Jerry.” (“What am I doing ! ” he 
groaned.) 

She understood now. “You don’t 
mean — ” she began in amazement. 

“ Yes,” he cried, passionately. “ I love 
you. Will you be my wife? (“I am 
lost ! ”) 

“ Gracious ! ” exclaimed Mrs. Jerry, and 
then on reflection she became indignant. 
“ I would not have believed it of you,” she 
said, scornfully. “ Is it my money or 
what ? I am not at all clever, so you must 
tell me.” 

With Tommy of course it was not her 
money. Except when he had Elspeth to 
consider he was as much a Quixote about 


money as Pym himself, and at no moment 
of his life was he a snob. 

“Iam sorry you should think so meanly 
of me,” he said, with dignity, lifting his 
hat, and he would have got away then 
(which when you come to think of it was 
what he wanted) had he been able to re- 
sist an impulse to heave a broken-hearted 
sigh at the door. 

“ Don’t go yet, Mr. Sandys,” she 
begged, “ I may have been hasty. And 
yet — why, we are merely acquaint- 
ances.” 

He had meant to be very careful now, 
but that word sent him off again. “ Ac- 
quaintances ! ” he cried, “no, we were 
never that.” 

“It almost seemed to me that you 
avoided me.” 

“You noticed it!” he said, eagerly. 
“ At least you do me that justice. Oh, 
how I tried to avoid you ! ” 

“It was because ” 

“ Alas ! ” 

She was touched of course, but still 
puzzled. “We know so little of each 
other,” she said. 

“ I see,” he replied, “ that you know 
me very little, Mrs. Jerry, but you — oh, 
J erry, J erry, I know you as no other man 
has ever known you ! ” 

“ I wish I had proof of it,” she said, 
helplessly. 

Proof ! She should not have asked 
Tommy for proof. “ I know,” he cried, 
“ how unlike all other women you are. To 
the world you are like the rest, but in your 
heart you know that you are different, you 
know it and I know it, and no other per- 
son knows it.” 

Yes, Mrs. Jerry knew it, and had often 
marvelled over it in the seclusion of her 
boudoir, but that another should have 
found it out was strange and almost ter- 
rifying. 

“ I know you love me now,” she said, 
softly, “ only love could have shown you 
that, but — oh, let me go away for a minute 
to think,” and she ran out of the room. 

Other suitors have been left for a space 
in Tommy’s state of doubt, but never, it 
may be hoped, with the same emotions. 
Oh, Heavens, if she should accept him ! 
He saw Elspeth sickening and dying of 
the news. 

His guardian angel, however, was very 


Tommy and Grizel 


good to Tommy at this time, or, perhaps, 
like cannibals with their prisoner, the God 
of sentiment (who has a tail) was fatten- 
ing him for a future feast, and Mrs. Jerry's 
answer was that it could never be. 

Tommy bowed his head. 

But she hoped he would let her be his 
very dear friend. It would be the proud- 
est recollection of her life that Mr. Sandys 
had entertained such feelings for her. 

Nothing could have been better, and he 
should have been finding difficulty in con- 
cealing his delight, but this strange Tommy 
was really feeling his part again. It was 
an unforced tear that came to his eye. 
Quite naturally he looked long and wist- 
fully at her. 

“Jerry, Jerry,” he articulated, huskily, 
and whatever the words mean in these 
circumstances he really meant, then he put 
his lips to her hand for the first and last 
time, and so was gone, broken but brave. 
He was in splendid fettle for writing that 
evening. Wild animals sleep after gorg- 
ing, but it sent this monster, refreshed, to 
his work. 

Nevertheless, the incident gave him 
some uneasy reflections. Was he indeed 
a monster, was one that he could dodge 
as yet, but suppose Mrs. Jerry told his 
dear Elspeth of what had happened ? 
She had said that she would not, but a 
secret in Mrs. Jerry's breast was like her 
pug in her arms, always kicking to get 
free. 

“ Elspeth,” said Tommy, “what do you 
say to going north and having a sight of 
Thrums again ? ” 

He knew what she would say. They 
had been talking for years of going back ; 
it was the great day that all her corre- 
spondence with old friends in Thrums 
looked forward to. 

“ They made little of you, Tommy,” 
she said, “ when we left, but I’m thinking 
they will all be at their windows when you 
go back.” 

“ Oh,” replied Thomas, “that’s nothing. 
But I should like to shake Corp by the 
hand again.” 

“ And Aaron,” said Elspeth. She was 
knitting stockings for Aaron at that mo- 
ment. 


“And Gavinia,” Tommy said, “and the 
dominie.” 

“ And Ailie.” 

And then came an awkward pause, for 
they were both thinking of that indepen- 
dent girl called Grizel. She was seldom 
discussed. Tommy had a queer shyness 
about mentioning her name ; he would 
have preferred Elspeth to mention it, and 
Elspeth had misgivings that this was so, 
with the result that neither could say 
Grizel without wondering what was in the 
other’s mind. Tommy had written twice 
to Grizel, the first time unknown to El- 
speth, but that was in the days when the 
ladies of the penny numbers were disturb- 
ing him, and against his better judgment 
(for well he knew she would never stand 
it) he had begun his letter with these mad 
words, “ Dear little woman.” She did 
not answer this, but soon afterward she 
wrote to Elspeth, and he was not men- 
tioned in the letter proper, but it carried a 
sting in its tail : “ P. S.,” it said, “How is 
Sentimental Tommy ? ” 

None but a fiend in human shape could 
have written that, and Elspeth put her 
protecting arms round her brother. “Now 
we know what Grizel is,” she said. “I am 
done with her now.” 

But when Tommy had got back his 
wind he said, nobly : “I’ll call her no 
names. If this is how she likes to repay 
me for — for all my kindnesses, let her. 
But, Elspeth, if I have the chance, I shall 
go on being good to her just the same.” 

Elspeth adored him for it, but Grizel 
would have stamped had she known. He 
had that comfort. 

The second letter he never posted. It 
was written a few months before he be- 
came a celebrity, and had very fine things 
indeed in it, for old Dr. McQueen, Griz- 
el’s dear friend, had just died at his post, 
and it was a letter of condolence. While 
Tommy wrote it he was in a quiver of 
genuine emotion, as he was very pleased 
to feel, and it had a specially satisfying 
bit about death and the world never being 
the same again. He knew it was good, 
but he did not send it to her, for no rea- 
son I can discover save that postscript 
jarred on him. 


TOMMY AND GRIZEL 


BY J. M. BARRIE 

Author of “ Sentimental Tommy,” “ The Little Minister,” etc. 



CHAPTER IV 

GRIZEL 

0 expose Tommy for what 
he was, to appear to be 
scrupulously fair to him so 
that I might really damage 
him the more, that is what 

1 set out to do in this book, 
and always when he seemed to be finding 
a way of getting round me (as I had a 
secret dread he might do) I was to re- 
member Grizel and be obdurate. But if 
I have so far got past some of his virtues 
without even mentioning them (and I 
have), I know how many opportunities 
for discrediting him have been missed, 
and that would not greatly matter, there 
are so many more to come, if Grizel were 
on my side. But she is not ; throughout 
those first chapters a voice has been cry- 
ing to me, “ Take care, if you hurt him 
you will hurt me,” and I know it to be 
the voice of Grizel, and I seem to see 
her, rocking her arms as she used to rock 
them when excited in the days of her in- 
nocent childhood. “ Don’t, don’t, don’t,” 
she cried at every cruel word I gave him, 
and she to whom it was ever such agony 
to weep dropped a tear upon each of 
them so that they were obliterated, and 
“ Surely I knew him best,” she said, “and 
I always loved him,” and she stood there 
defending him, with her hand on her heart 
to conceal the gaping wound that Tommy 
had made. 

Well, if Grizel had always loved him 
there was surely something fine and rare 
about Tommy. But what was it, Grizel, 
why did you always love him, you who 
saw into him so well and demanded so 
much of men ? When I ask that ques- 
tion the spirit that hovers round my desk 
to protect Tommy from me rocks her arms 
mournfully, as if she did not know the 
answer ; it is only when I seem to see her 


as she so often was in life, before she got 
that wound and after, bending over some 
little child and looking up radiant, that I 
think I suddenly know why she always 
loved Tommy. It was because he had 
such need of her. 

I don’t know whether you remember, 
but there were once some children who 
played at Jacobites in the Thrums den 
under Tommy’s leadership ; Elspeth, of 
course, was one of them, and there were 
Corp Shiach and Gavinia, and lastly, 
there was Grizel. Had Tommy’s parents 
been alive she would not have been al- 
lowed to join, for she was a painted lady’s 
child, but Tommy insisted on having her, 
and Grizel thought it was just sweet of 
him. He also chatted with her in public 
places, as if she were a respectable char- 
acter, and oh, how she longed to be re- 
spectable ! but, on the other hand, he was 
the first to point out how superbly he was 
behaving, and his ways were masterful, so 
the independent girl would not be cap- 
tain’s wife ; if he said she was captain’s 
wife he had to apologize, and if he mere- 
ly looked it he had to apologize just the 
same. 

One night the painted lady died in 
the den, and then it would have gone 
hard with the lonely girl had not Dr. 
McQueen made her his little housekeeper, 
not out of pity, he vowed (she was so anx- 
ious to be told that), but because he was 
an old bachelor, sorely in need of some- 
one to take care of him. And how she 
took care of him ! But though she was 
so happy now, she knew that she must be 
very careful, for there was something in 
her blood that might waken and prevent 
her being a good woman . She thought 
it would be sweet to be good. 

She told all this to Tommy, and he 
was profoundly interested and consulted a 
wise man, whose advice was that when 
she grew up she should be wary of any 
man whom sne liked and mistrusted in one 


Tommy and Grizel 


breath. Meaning to do her a service, 
Tommy communicated this to her, and 
then, what do you think, Grizel would 
have no more dealings with him ! By 
and by the gods, in a sportive mood, sent 
him to labor on a farm, whence, as we 
have seen, he found a way to London, and 
while he was growing into a man Grizel 
became a woman. At the time of the 
doctor’s death she was nineteen, tall and 
graceful, and very dark and pale. When 
the winds of the day flushed her cheek 
she was beautiful, but it was a beauty 
that hid the mystery of her face ; the sun 
made her merry, but she looked more no- 
ble when it had set, then her pallor shone 
with a soft radiant light, as though the 
mystery and sadness and serenity of the 
moon were in it. The full beauty of 
Grizel came out only at night, like the 
stars. 

I had made up my mind that when the 
time came to describe Grizel’s mere out- 
ward appearance I should refuse her that 
word beautiful because of her tilted nose. 
But now that the time has come I wonder 
at myself. Probably when I am chapters 
ahead I shall return to this one and strike 
out the word beautiful, and then as likely 
as not I shall come back afterwards and 
put it in again. Whether it will be there 
at the end God knows. Her eyes at least 
were beautiful, they were unusually far 
apart and let you look straight into them 
and never quivered, they were such clear, 
gray, searching eyes, they seemed always 
to be asking for the truth. And she had 
an adorable mouth. In repose it was per- 
haps hard because it shut so decisively, 
but often it screwed up provokingly at one 
side, as when she smiled or was sorry or 
for no particular reason, for she seemed 
unable to control this vagary, which was 
perhaps a little bit of babyhood that had 
forgotten to grow up with the rest of her. 
At those moments the essence of all that 
was characteristic and delicious about her 
seemed to have run to her mouth, so that 
to kiss Grizel on her crooked smile would 
have been to kiss the whole of her at once. 
She had a quaint way of nodding her head 
at you when she was talking ; it made you 
forget what she was saying, though it was 
really meant to have precisely the opposite 
effect. Her voice was rich, with many 
inflections; when she had much to say it 


gurgled like a stream in a hurry, but its 
cooing note was best worth remembering 
at the end of the day. There were times 
when she looked like a boy. Her almost 
gallant bearing, the poise of her head, her 
noble frankness, they all had something 
in them of a princely boy who had never 
known fear. 

I have no wish to hide her defects. I 
would rather linger over them, because 
they were part of Grizel, and I am sorry 
to see them go one by one. Thrums had 
not taken her to its heart. She was stiff 
and haughty, they said, and had a proud 
walk ; her sense of justice was too great, 
she scorned frailties that she should have 
pitied (how strange to think that there was 
a time when pity was not the feeling that 
leapt to Grizel’s bosom first). She did not 
care for study, she learned French and the 
pianoforte to please the doctor, but she 
preferred to be sewing or dusting. When 
she might have been reading she was per- 
haps making for herself one of those cos- 
tumes that depressed every lady of Thrums 
who employed a dressmaker, or more prob- 
ably it was a delicious garment for a baby, 
for as soon as Grizel heard that there was 
a new baby anywhere all her intellect de- 
serted her and she became a slave. Books 
often irritated her because she disagreed 
with the author, and it was a torment to 
her to find other people holding to their 
views when she was so certain that hers 
were right. In church she sometimes 
rocked her arms, and the old doctor by 
her side knew that it was because she 
could not get up and contradict the min- 
ister; she was, I presume, the only young 
lady who ever dared to say that she hated 
Sunday because there was so much sitting 
still in it. 

Sitting still did not suit Grizel, at all 
other times she was happy, but then her 
mind wandered back to the thoughts that 
had lived too closely with her in the old 
days, and she was troubled. What woke 
her from these reveries was probably the 
doctor’s hand placed very tenderly on her 
shoulder, and then she would start and 
wonder how long he had been watching 
her and what were the grave thoughts be- 
hind his cheerful face. For the doctor 
never looked more cheerful than when he 
was drawing Grizel away from the ugly 
past, and he talked to her as if he had no- 


Tommy and Grizel 


ticed nothing; but after he went upstairs 
he would pace his bedroom for a long time, 
and Grizel listened and knew that he was 
thinking about her. Then perhaps she 
would run up to him and put her arms 
around his neck. These scenes brought 
the doctor and Grizel very close together, 
but they became rarer as she grew up, and 
then for once that she was troubled she 
was a hundred times irresponsible with 
glee, and, “Oh, you dearest, darlingest,” 
she would cry to him, “ I must dance, I 
must, I must, though it is a Fast Day, and 
you must dance with your mother this in- 
stant, I am so happy, so happy! ” Mother 
was his nickname for her, and she de- 
lighted in the word; she lorded it over him 
as if he were her troublesome boy. 

How could she be other than glorious 
when there was so much to do? The 
work inside the house she made for her- 
self and outside the doctor made it for 
her. At last he had found for nurse a 
woman who could follow his instructions 
literally, who understood that if he said 
five o’clock for the medicine the chap of six 
would not do as well, who did not in her 
heart despise the thermometer and who 
resolutely prevented the patient from skip- 
ping out of bed to change her pillow-slips 
because the minister was expected. Such 
tyranny enraged every sufferer who had 
been ill before and got better, but what 
they chiefly complained of to the doctor 
(and he agreed with a humorous sigh), was 
her masterfulness about fresh air and cold 
water. Windows were opened that had 
never been opened before (they yielded 
to her pressure with a groan), and as for 
cold water it might have been said that a 
bath followed her wherever she went, not, 
mark me, for putting your hands and face 
in, not even for your feet, but in you must 
go, the whole of you, “as if,” they said, in- 
dignantly, “there was something the mat- 
ter with our skin.” 

She could not gossip, not even with the 
doctor, who liked it of an evening when 
he had got into his carpet shoes. There 
was no use telling her a secret, for she 
kept it to herself forevermore. She had 
ideas about how men should serve a 
woman, even the humblest, that made the 
men gaze with wonder and the women 
(curiously enough) with irritation. Her 
greatest scorn was for girl? who made 


themselves cheap with men, and she could 
not hide it. It was a physical pain to Grizel 
to hide her feelings, they popped out in 
her face, if not in words, and were always 
in advance of her self-control. To the 
doctor this impulsiveness was pathetic ; 
he loved her for it, but it sometimes made 
him uneasy. 

H e died in the scarlet-fever year. “I’m 
smitten,” he suddenly said at a bedside, 
and a week afterwards he was gone. 

“We must speak of it now, Grizel,” he 
said when he knew that he was dying. 

She pressed his hand ; she knew to what 
he was referring. “Yes,” she said, “ I 
should love you to speak of it now.” 

“You and I have always fought shy of 
it,” he said, “making a pretence that it 
had altogether passed away. I thought 
that was best for you.” 

“ Dearest, darlingest,” she said, “ I 
know, I have always known.” 

“ And you,” he said, “ you pretended 
because you thought it was best for me. ” 

She nodded. “ And we saw through 
each other all the time,” she said. 

“ Grizel, has it passed away altogether 
now ?” 

Her grip upon his hand did not tighten 
in the least. “Yes,” she could say hon- 
estly, “it has altogether passed away.” 

“ And you have no more fear ? ” 

“ No, none.” 

It was his great reward for all that he 
had done for Grizel. 

“ I know what you are thinking of,” 
she said when he did not speak. “You 
are thinking of the haunted little girl you 
rescued seven years ago.” 

“ No,” he answered, “ I was thanking 
God for the brave wholesome woman she 
has grown into. And for something else, 
Grizel, for letting me live to see it.” 

“To do it,” she said, pressing his hand 
to her breast. 

She was a strange girl, and she had to 
speak her mind. “ I don’t think God has 
done it all,” she said. “ I don’t even 
think that He told you to do it. I 
think He just said to you ‘There is a 
painted lady’s child at your door; you 
can save her if you like.’ ” 

“No,” she went on when he would 
have interposed, “I am sure He did not 
want to do it all ; He even left a little bit 
of it to me to do myself. I love to think 


Tommy and Grizel 


that I have done a tiny bit of it myself. I 
think it is the sweetest thing about God 
that He lets us do some of it ourselves. 
Do I hurt you, darling ? ” 

No, she did not hurt him, for he un- 
derstood her. “ But you are naturally so 
impulsive,” he said, “ it has often been a 
sharp pain to me to see you so careful.” 

“ It was not a pain to me to be careful, 
it was a joy. Oh, the thousand dear de- 
lightful joys I have had with you.” 

“ It has made you strong, Grizel, and I 
rejoice in that ; but sometimes I fear that 
it has made you too difficult to win.” 

“ I don’t want to be won,” she told him. 

“ You don’t quite mean that, Grizel.” 

“ No,” she said at once. She whispered 
to him impulsively. “ It is the only thing 
I am at all afraid of now.” 

“ What ? ” 

“ Love.” 

“You will not be afraid of it when it 
comes.” 

“But I want to be afraid,” she said. 

“ You need not,” he answered. “ The 
man on whom those clear eyes rest lov- 
ingly will be worthy of it all. If he were 
not, they would be the first to find him 
out.” 

“But need that make any difference ? ” 
she asked. “Perhaps though I found 
him out I should love him just the same.” 

“ Not unless you loved him first, 
Grizel.” 

“No,” she said at once again. “ I am 
not really afraid of love,” she whispered 
to him. “You have made me so happy 
that I am afraid of nothing.” 

Yet she wondered a little that he was 
not afraid to die, but when she told him 
this he smiled and said, “Everybody 
fears death except those who are dying.” 
And when she asked if he had anything 
on his mind he said, “ I leave the world 
without a care. Not that I have seen all 
I would fain have seen. Many a time, 
especially this last year, when I have seen 
the mother in you crooning to some 
neighbor’s child, I have thought to myself, 
‘ I don’t know my Grizel yet, I have seen 
her only in the bud,’ and I would fain — ” 
He broke off. “ But I have no fears,” 
he said. “As I lie here with you sitting 
by my side, looking so serene, I can say, 
for the first time for half a century, that I 
have nothing on my mind.” 


“But, Grizel, I should have married,” 
he told her. “ The chief lesson my life 
has taught me is that they are poor crit- 
turs, the men who don’t marry.” 

“ If you had married,” she said, “ you 
might never have been able to help me.” 

“ It is you who have helped me,” he re- 
plied. “ God sent the child, He is most re- 
luctant to give any of us up. Ay, Grizel, 
that’s what my life has taught me, and it’s 
all I can leave to you.” The last he saw 
of her she was holding his hand and her 
eyes were dry, her teeth were clenched, but 
there was a brave smile upon her face, for 
he had told her that it was thus he would 
like to see her at the end. After his death 
she continued to live at the old house ; he 
had left it to her (“I want it to remain in 
the family ” he said) with all his savings, 
which were quite sufficient for the needs 
of such a manager ; he had also left her 
plenty to do, and that was a still sweeter 
legacy. 

And the other Jacobites, what of them? 
Hie, where are you, Corp ? Here he comes, 
grinning in his spleet new uniform to de- 
mand our tickets of us. He is now the 
railway porter. Since Tommy left Thrums 
“ steam ” had arrived in it, and Corp had 
by nature such a gift for giving luggage the 
twist which breaks everything inside as you 
dump it down that he was inevitably ap- 
pointed porter. There was no travelling to 
Thrums without a ticket. At Tilliedrum, 
which was the junction for Thrums, you 
showed your ticket and were then locked in. 
A hundred yards from Thrums Corp leapt 
upon the train and fiercely demanded your 
ticket. At the station he asked you, threat- 
eningly, whether you had given up your 
ticket. Even his wife was afraid of him 
at such times, and had her ticket ready in 
her hand. 

His wife was one Gavinia, and she had 
no fear of him except when she was travel- 
ling. To his face she referred to him as 
a doited sumph, but to Grizel pleading for 
him she admitted that despite his warts and 
quarrelsome legs he was a great big muckle 
sonsy, stout, buirdly well-set up, wise-like, 
havering man. When first Corp had pro- 
posed to her she gave him a clout on the 
head, and so little did he know of the sex 
that this discouraged him. He continued, 
however, to propose and she to clout him 
until he heard, accidentally (he woke up 


Tommy and Grizel 


in church), of a man in the Bible who had 
wooed a woman for seven years, and this 
example he determined to emulate, but 
when Gavinia heard of it she was so furi- 
ous that she took him at once. Dazed by 
his good fortune, he rushed off with it to 
his aunt, whom he wearied with his repe- 
tition of the great news. 

“To your bed wi’ you,” she said, yawn- 
ing. 

“ Bed ! ” cried Corp, indignantly. “ And 
so, auntie, says Gavinia, ‘Yes,’ says she, 
‘I’ll have you.’ Those were her never-to- 
be-forgotten words.” 

“You pitiful object,” answered his aunt, 
“ men hae been married afore now with- 
out making sic a stramash.” 

“I daursay,” retorted Corp, “but they 
hinna married Gavinia,” and this is the 
best known answer to the sneer of the 
cynic. 

He was a public nuisance that night, and 
knocked various people up after they had 
gone to bed to tell them that Gavinia was 
to have him. He was eventually led home 
by kindly though indignant neighbors, but 
early morning found him in the country 
carrying the news from farm to farm. 

“No, I winna sit down,” he said, “I 
just cried in to tell you Gavinia is to hae 
me. ” Six miles from home he saw a mud- 
house on the top of a hill and ascended 
genially. He found at their porridge a 
very old lady with a nut-cracker face, and 
a small boy. We shall see them again. 
“Auld wifie,” said Corp, “I dinna ken 
you, but I’ve just stepped up to tell you 
that Gavinia is to hae me.” 

It made him the butt of the sportive. 
If he or Gavinia were nigh they gathered 
their fowls round them and then said, 
“ Hens, I didna bring you here to feed you, 
but just to tell you that Gavinia is to hae 
me.” This flustered Gavinia, but Grizel, 
who enjoyed her own jokes too heartily 
to have more than a polite interest in those 
of other people, said to her, “ How can 
you be angry ! I think it was just sweet 
of him.” 

“ But was it no vulgar ?” 

“Vulgar!” said Grizel. “Why, Ga- 
vinia, that is how every lady would like a 
man to love her.” 

And then Gavinia beamed. “ I’m glad 
you say that,” she said, “ for though I 
wouldna tell Corp for worlds, I fell likit it.” 


But Grizel told Corp that Gavinia 
liked it. 

“ It was the proof,” she said, smiling, 
“ that you have the right to marry her. 
You have shown your ticket. Never give 
it up, Corp.” 

About a year afterward Corp, armed in 
his Sunday stand, rushed to Grizel’s house, 
occasionally stopping to slap his shiny 
knees. “ Grizel,” he cried, “ there’s some- 
body come to Thrums without a ticket ! ” 
Then he remembered Gavinia’s instruc- 
tions. “ Mrs. Shiach’s compliments,” he 
said, ponderously, “ and it’s a boy.” 

“ Oh, Corp ! ” exclaimed Grizel, and 
immediately began to put on her hat and 
jacket. 

Corp watched her uneasily. “ Mrs. 
Shiach’s compliments,” he said, firmly, 
“ and he’s ower young to be bathed yet. 
But she’s awid to show him off to you,” 
he hastened to add. “ ‘ Tell Grizel,’ was 
her first words.” 

Tell Grizel ! They were among the 
first words of many mothers. None, they 
were aware, would receive the news with 
quite such glee as she. They might think 
her cold and reserved with themselves, 
but to see the look on her face as she bent 
over a baby, and to know that the baby 
was yours ! What a way she had with 
them ! She always welcomed them as if 
in coming they had performed a great 
feat. That is what babies are agape for 
from the beginning. Had they been able 
to speak they would have said, “Tell Gri- 
zel ” themselves. 

“And Mrs. Shiach’s compliments,” 
Corp remembered, “and she would be 
windy if you would carry the bairn at the 
christening.” 

“ I should love it, Corp ! Have you 
decided on the name? ” 

“ Lang syne. Gin it were a lassie we 
were to call her Grizel ” 

“ Oh, how sweet of you ! ” * 

“After the finest lassie we ever kent,” 
continued Corp, stoutly. “ But I was sure 
it would be a laddie.” 

“Why?” 

“ Because if it was a laddie it was to be 
called after him,” he said, with emphasis 
on the last word; “and thinks I to mysel’, 
‘He’ll find a way.’ What a crittur he was 
for finding a way, Grizel ! and he lookit 
so holy a’ the time. Do you mind that 


Tommy and Grizel 


swear-word o’ his, ‘Stroke’? It just 
meant damn, but he could make even 
damn look holy.” 

“You are to call the baby Tommy? ” 

“ He’ll be christened Thomas Sandys 
Shiach,” said Corp. “ I hankered after 
putting something out o’ the Jacobites in- 
til his name, and I says to Gavinia, ‘ Let’s 
call him Thomas Sandys Stroke Shiach ? ’ 
says I, ‘and the minister’ll be nane the 
wiser,’ but Gavinia was scandalizyed.” 

Grizel reflected. “Corp,” she said, “ I 
am sure Gavinia’s sister will expect to be 
asked to carry the baby. I don’t think 
I want to do it.” 

“ After you promised ! ” cried Corp, 
much hurt. “ I never kent you to break 
a promise afore.” 

“ I will do it, Corp,” she said, at once. 

She did not know then that Tommy 
would be in church to witness the cere- 
mony, but she knew before she walked 
down the aisle with T. S. Shiach in her 
arms. It was the first time that Tommy 
and she had seen each other for seven 
years. That day he almost rivalled his 
namesake in the interests of the congrega- 
tion, who, however, took prodigious care 
that he should not see it. All except Gri- 
zel. She smiled a welcome to him, and 
he knew that her serene gray eyes were 
watching him. 


CHAPTER V 


THE TOMMY MYTH 



N the previous evening Aa- 
ron Latta, his head sunk 
farther into his shoulders, 
his beard gone grayer, no 
other perceptible difference 
in a dreary man since we 
last saw him in the book of Tommy’s 
boyhood, had met the brother and sis- 
ter at the station, a barrow with him 
for their luggage. It was a great hour 
for him as he wheeled the barrow home- 
ward, Elspeth once more by his side, but 
he could say nothing heartsome in Tom- 
my’s presence and Tommy was as uncom- 
fortable in his. The old strained relations 
between these two seemed to begin again 
at once. They were as self-conscious as 
two mastiffs meeting in the street and both 


breathed a sigh of relief when Tommy 
fell behind. 

“ You’re bonny, Elspeth,” Aaron then 
said, eagerly. “I’m glad, glad to see you 
again.” 

“ And him, too, Aaron ? ” Elspeth 
pleaded. 

“ He took you away frae me.” 

“He has brought me back.” 

“ Ay, and he has but to whistle to you 
and away you go wi’ him again. He’s 
ower grand to bide lang here now.” 

“ You don’t know him, Aaron. We 
are to stay a long time. Do you know 
Mrs. McLean invited us to stay with her ? 
I suppose she thought your house was so 
small ; but Tommy said, ‘ The house of 
the man who befriended us when we were 
children shall never be too small for us.’” 

“ Did he say that ? Ay, but, Elspeth, 
I would rather hear what you said.” 

“ I said it was to dear, good Aaron 
Latta I was going back and to no one 
else.” 

“ God bless you for that, Elspeth.” 

“And Tommy,” she went on, “must 
have his old garret-room again, to write 
as well as sleep in, and the little room 
you partitioned off the kitchen will do 
nicely for me.” 

“There’s no a window in it,” replied 
Aaron, “but it will^do fine for you, El- 
speth.” He was almost chuckling, for he 
had a surprise in waiting for her. “This 
way,” he said, excitedly, when she would 
have gone into the kitchen, and he flung 
open the door of what had been his warp- 
ing-room. The warping mill was gone, 
everything that had been there was gone ; 
what met the delighted eyes of Elspeth 
and Tommy was a cosy parlor, which be- 
came a bedroom when you opened that 
other door. 

“You are a leddy now, Elspeth,” Aaron 
said, husky with pride, “ and you have a 
leddy’s room. Do you see the piano ? ” 

He had given up the warping, having 
at last “ twa three hunder’ ” in the bank, 
and all the work he did now was at a loom 
which he had put into the kitchen to keep 
him out of languor. “ I have sorted up 
the garret, too, for you,” he said to Tom- 
my, “ but this is Elspeth’s room.” 

“ As if Tommy would take it from me ! ” 
said Elspeth, running into the kitchen to 
hug this dear Aaron. 


Tommy and Grizel 


“You may laugh,” Aaron replied, vin- 
dictively, “but he is taking it frae you al- 
ready ; ” and later, when Tommy was out 
of the way, he explained his meaning : “ I 
did it all for you, Elspeth ; Elspeth’s room 
I called it ; when I bought the mahogany 
arm-chair, ‘That’s Elspeth’s chair,’ I says 
to mysel’, and when I bought the bed, 
‘it’s hers,’ I said; ay, but I was soon dis- 
annulled o’ that thait, for in spite of me, 
they were all got for him. Not a rissom 
in that room is yours or mine, Elspeth ; 
every muhlen belongs to him.” 

“ But who says so, Aaron ? Iam sure 
he won’t.” 

“I dinna ken them. They are leddies 
that come here in their carriages to see the 
house where Thomas Sandys was bom.” 

“ But, Aaron, he was born in London ! ” 

“ They think he was born in this house,” 
Aaron replied, doggedly, “ and it’s no for 
me to cheapen him.” 

“ Oh, Aaron, you pretend ” 

“ I was never very fond o’ him,” Aaron 
admitted, “but I winna cheapen Jean 
Myles’s bairn, and when they chap at my 
door and say they would like to see the 
room Thomas Sandys was bom in I let 
them see the best room I have. So that’s 
how he has laid hands on your parlor, 
Elspeth. Afore I can get rid o’ them 
they gie a squeak and cry ‘Was that 
Thomas Sandys’s bed ? ’ and I says it 
was. That’s him taking the very bed 
frae you, Elspeth.” 

“You might at least have shown them 
his bed in the garret,” she said. 

“It’s a shilpit bit thing,” he answered, 
“and I winna cheapen him. They’re 
curious, too, to see his favorite seat.” 

“ It was the fender,” she declared. 

“ It was,” he assented, “ but it’s no for 
me to cheapen him, so I let them see your 
new mahogany chair. ‘ Thomas Sandys’s 
chair ’ they call it, and they sit down in 
it reverently. They winna even leave 
you the piano. ‘Was this Thomas San- 
dys’s piano ? ’ they speir. ‘ It was,’ says 
I, and syne they gowp at it.” His un- 
der lip shot out, a sure sign that he was 
angry. “ I dinna blame him,” he said, 
“ but he had the same masterful way of 
scooping everything into his lap when he 
was a laddie, and I like him none the mair 
for it ; ” and from this position Aaron 
would not budge. 


“ Quite right, too,” Tommy said when 
he heard of it. “ But you can tell him, 
Elspeth, that we shall let no more of those 
prying women in; ” and he really meant 
this, for he was a modest man that day, 
was Tommy. Nevertheless, he was, per- 
haps, a little annoyed to find, as the days 
went on, that no more ladies came to be 
turned away. 

He heard that they had also been un- 
able to resist the desire to shake hands 
with Thomas Sandys’s schoolmaster. “ It 
must have been a pleasure to teach him,” 
they said to Cathro. 

“Ah me, ah me ! ” Cathro replied, enig- 
matically. It had so often been a pleasure 
to Cathro to thrash him. 

“Genius is odd,” they said. “ Did he 
ever give you any trouble? ” 

“We were like father and son,” he as- 
sured them. With natural pride he showed 
them the ink-pot into which Thomas San- 
dys had dipped as a boy. They were very 
grateful for his interesting reminiscence 
that when the pot was too full Thomas 
inked his fingers. He presented several 
of them with the ink-pot. 

Two ladies, who came together, both- 
ered him by asking what the Hugh Black- 
adder competition was. They had been 
advised to inquire of him about Thomas 
Sandys’s connection therewith by another 
schoolmaster, a Mr. Ogilvy, whom they 
had met in one of the glens. 

Mr. Cathro winced, and then explained 
with emphasis that the Hugh Blackadder 
was a competition in which the local min- 
isters were the sole judges. He therefore 
referred the ladies to them. The ladies 
did go to a local minister for enlighten- 
ment, to Mr. Dishart, but after reflecting, 
Mr. Dishart said that it was too long a 
story, and this answer seemed to amuse 
Mr. Ogilvy, who happened to be present. 

It was Mr. McLean who retailed this 
news to Tommy. He and Ailie had 
walked home from church with the new- 
comers on the day after their arrival, the 
day of the christening. They had not gone 
into Aaron’s house, for you are looked 
askance at in Thrums if you pay visits on 
Sundays, but they had stood for a long 
time gossiping at the door, which is per- 
mitted by the strictest. Ailie was in a 
twitter, as of old, and not able even yet to 
speak of her husband without an apolo- 


Tommy and Grizel 


getic look to the ladies who had none, and, 
oh, how proud she was of Tommy’s fame! 
Her eyes were an offering to him. 

“ Don’t take her as a sample of the 
place, though,” Mr. McLean warned him, 
“for Thrums does not catch fire so readily 
as London.” It was quite true. “I was 
at the school wi’ him,” they said up there, 
and implied that this damned his book. 

But there were two faithful souls, or 
more strictly one, for Corp could never 
have carried it through without Gavinia’s 
help. Tommy called on them promptly at 
their house in the Bellies Brae (four rooms 
but a lodger), and said, almost before he 
had time to look, that the baby had Corp’s 
chin and Gavinia’s eyes. He had made 
this up on the way. He also wanted to 
say, so desirous was he of pleasing his old 
friends, that he should like to hold the 
baby in his arms, but it was such a thun- 
dering lie that even an author could not 
say it. 

Tommy sat down in that house with a 
very warm heart for its inmates, but they 
chilled him, Gavinia with her stiff words 
and Corp by looking miserable instead of 
joyous. 

“I expected you to come to me first, 
Corp,” said Tommy, reproachfully. “ I 
had scarcely a word with you at the sta- 
tion.” 

“He couldna hae presumed,” replied 
Gavinia, primly. 

“ I couldna hae presumed,” said Corp, 
with a groan. 

“ Fudge!” Tommy said. “You were 
my greatest friend, and I like you as much 
as ever, Corp.” 

Corp’s face shone, but Gavinia said at 
once, “You wema sic great friends as that. 
Were you, man?” 

“No,” Corp replied, gloomily. 

“Whatever has come over you both?” 
asked Tommy, in surprise. “ You will be 
saying next, Gavinia, that we never played 
at Jacobites in the den! ” 

“ I dinna deny that Corp and me 
played,” Gavinia answered, determinedly, 
“but you didna. You said to us , 1 Think 
shame,’ you said, ‘to be playing vulgar 
games when you could be reading supe- 
rior books.’ They were his very words, 
were they no, man? ” she demanded of 
her unhappy husband, with a threatening 
look. 


“They were,” said Corp in deepest 
gloom. 

“I must get to the bottom of this,” 
said Tommy, rising, “and as you are too 
great a coward, Corp, to tell the truth, 
with that shameless woman glowering at 
you, out you go, Gavinia, and take your 
disgraced bairn with you. Do as you are 
told, you besom, for I am Captain Stroke 
again.” 

Corp was choking with delight as Ga- 
vinia withdrew haughtily. “I was sure 
you would sort her,” he said, rubbing his 
hands, “ I was sure you wasna the kind 
to be ashamed o’ auld friends.” 

“ But what does it mean ? ” 

“ She has a notion,” Corp explained, 
growing grave again, “ that it wouldna 
do for you to own the like o’ us. ‘We 
mauna cheapen him,’ she said. She want- 
ed you to see that we hinna been cheap- 
ening you.” He said, in a sepulchral 
voice, “ There has been leddies here, and 
they want to ken what Thomas Sandys 
was like as a boy. It’s me they speir for, 
but Gavinia she just shoves me out o’ 
sight, and, says she, ‘ Leave them to me.’ ” 

Corp told Tommy some of the things 
Gavinia said about Thomas Sandys as a 
boy, how he sat rapt in church, and in- 
stead of going bird-nesting, lay on the 
ground listening to the beautiful little 
warblers overhead, and gave all his pen- 
nies to poorer children, and could repeat 
the shorter Catechism, beginning at either 
end, and was very respectful to the aged 
and infirm, and of a yielding disposition, 
and said, from his earliest years, ‘ I don’t 
want to be great, I just want to be 
good.’ ” 

“How can she make them all up ? ” 
Tommy asked, with respectful homage to 
Gavinia. 

Corp, with his eye on the door, pro- 
duced from beneath the bed a little book 
with colored pictures. It was entitled, 
“ Great Boyhoods,” by Aunt Martha. 
“ She doesna make them up,” he whis- 
pered, “ she gets them out o’ this.” 

“ And you back her up, Corp, even 
when she says I was not your friend !” 

“ It was like a t’knife intil me,” replied 
loyal Corp, “ every time I forswore you it 
was like a t’knife, but I did it, ay, and 
I’ll go on doing it if you think my friend- 
ship cheapens you.” 


Tommy and Grizel 


Tommy was much moved, and gripped 
his old lieutenant by the hand. He also 
called Gavinia ben, and before she could 
ward him off, the masterful rogue had sa- 
luted her on the cheek. “ That,” said 
Tommy, “ is to show you that I am as 
fond of the old times* and my old friends 
as ever, and the moment you deny it I 
shall take you to mean, Gavinia, that you 
want another kiss.” 

“ He’s just the same ! ” Corp remarked, 
ecstatically, when Tommy had gone. 

“ I dinna deny,” Gavinia said, “ but 
what he’s fell taking,” and for a time they 
ruminated. 

“ Gavinia,” said Corp, suddenly, “ I 
wouldna wonder but what he’s a gey lad 
wi’ the women ! ” 

“ What makes you think that ? ” she 
replied, coldly, and he had the prudence 
not to say. He should have followed his 
hero home, to be disabused of this mon- 
strous notion, for even while it was being 
propounded Tommy was sitting in such 
an agony of silence in a woman’s presence 
that she could not resist smiling a crooked 
smile at him. His want of words did not 
displease Grizel ; she was of opinion that 
young men should always be a little awed 
by young ladies. 

He had found her with Elspeth on his 
return home. Would Grizel call and be 
friendly, he had asked himself many times 
since he saw her in church yesterday, and 
Elspeth was as curious ; each wanted to 
know what the other thought of her, but 
neither had the courage to inquire, they 
both wanted to know so much. Her name 
had been mentioned, but casually, not a 
word to indicate that she had grown up 
since they saw her last. The longer Tom- 
my remained silent the more, he knew, 
did Elspeth suspect him. He would have 
liked to say, in a careless voice, “ Rather 
pretty, isn’t she ? ” but he felt that this lit- 
tle Elspeth would see through him at once. 

For at the first glance he had seen what 
Grizel was, and a thrill of joy passed 
through him as he drank her in, it was but 
the joy of the eyes for the first moment, 
but it ran to his heart to say, “ This is the 
little hunted girl that was ! ” and Tommy 
was moved with a manly gladness that 
the girl who once was so fearful of the 
future had grown into this. The same 
unselfish delight in her for her own sake 


came over him again when he shook 
hands with her in Aaron’s parlor. This 
glorious creature with the serene eyes and 
the noble shoulders had been the hunted 
child of the Double Dykes ; he would 
have liked to race back into the past and 
bring little Grizel here to look. How 
many boyish memories he recalled, and 
she was in every one of them. His heart 
held nothing but honest joy in this meet- 
ing after so many years ; he longed to tell 
her how sincerely he was still her friend. 
Well, why don’t you tell her, Tommy, it is 
a thing you are good at, and you have 
been polishing up the phrases ever since 
she passed down the aisle with Master 
Shiach in her arms ; you have even planned 
out a way of putting Grizel at her ease, 
and behold, she is the only one of the three 
who is at ease. What has come over you? 
Does the reader think it was love ? No, 
it was only that pall of shyness ; he tried 
to fling it off, but could not ; behold Tom- 
my being buried alive. 

Elspeth showed less contemptibly than 
her brother, but it was Grizel who did most 
of the talking. She nodded her head and 
smiled at Tommy, but she was watching 
him all the time. She wore a dress in which 
brown and yellow mingled as in woods on 
an autumn day, and the jacket had a high 
collar of fur, over which she watched him. 
Let us say that she was watching to see 
whether any of the old Tommy was left in 
him. Yet with this problem confronting 
her she also had time to study the outer 
man, Tommy the dandy, his velvet jacket 
(a new one), his brazen waistcoat, his po- 
etic neckerchief, his spotless linen. His 
velvet jacket was to become the derision of 
Thrums, but Tommy took his bonneting 
haughtily, like one who was glad to suffer 
for a Cause. There were to be meetings 
here and there where people told with awe 
how many shirts he sent weekly to the wash. 
Grizel disdained his dandy tastes ; why did 
not Elspeth strip him of them ? and, oh, if 
he must wear that absurd waistcoat, could 
she not see that it would look another 
thing if the second button was put half an 
inch farther back ! How sinful of him to 
spoil the shape of his silly velvet jacket by 
carrying so many letters in the pockets. 
She learned afterward that he carried all 
those letters because there was a check 
in one of them, he did not know which, 


Tommy and Grizel 


and her sense of orderliness was outraged. 
Elspeth did not notice these things. She 
helped Tommy by her helplessness. There 
is reason to believe that once in London 
when she had need of a new hat, but 
money there was none, Tommy, looking 
very defiant, studied ladies’ hats in the 
shop-windows, brought all his intellect to 
bear on them, with the result that he did 
concoct out of Elspeth’s old hat a new one 
which was the admired of O. P. Pym and 
friends, who never knew the name of the 
artist. But obviously he could not take 
proper care of himself, and there is a kind 
of woman, of whom Grizel was one, to 
whose breasts this helplessness makes an 
unfair appeal. Oh, to dress him properly ! 
She could not help liking to be a mother to 
men, she wanted them to be the most no- 
ble characters, but completely dependent 
on her. 

Tommy walked home with her, and it 
seemed at first as if Elspeth’s absence was 
to be no help to him. He could not even 
plagiarize from ‘ Sandys on Woman.’ No 
one knew so well the kind of thing he 
should be saying, and no one could have 
been more anxious to say it, but a weight 
of shyness sat on the lid of Tommy. Hav- 
ing for half an hour raged internally at his 
misfortune, he now sullenly embraced it. 
“ If I am this sort of an ass, let me be it 
in the superlative degree,” he may be con- 
ceived saying bitterly to himself. He ad- 
dressed Grizel coldly, as “ Miss McQueen,” 
a name she had taken by the doctor’s wish 
soon after she went to live with him. 

“ There is no reason why you should 
call me that,” she said. “ Call me Grizel, 
as you used to do.” 

“ May I ? ” replied Tommy, idiotically. 
He knew it was idiotic, but that mood 
now had grip of him. 

“But I mean to call you Mr. Sandys,” 
she said, decisively. 

He was really glad to hear it, for to be 
called Tommy by anyone was now de- 
testable to him (which is why I always call 
him Tommy in these pages). So it was 
like him to say, with a sigh, “ I had hoped 
to hear you use the old name.” 

That sigh made her look at him sharply. 
He knew that he must be careful with 
Grizel and that she was irritated, but he 
had to go on. 

“ It is strange to me,” said Sentimental 


Tommy, “to be back here after all those 
years, walking this familiar road once more 
with you. I thought it would make me feel 
myself a boy again, but, heigh ho, it has 
just the opposite effect, I never felt so old 
as I do to-day.” 

His voice trembled a little, I don’t know 
why. Grizel frowned. 

“ But you never were as old as you are 
to-day, were you ? ” she inquired, polite- 
ly. It whisked Tommy out of danger- 
ous waters and laid him at her feet. He 
laughed, not perceptibly or audibly, of 
course, but somewhere inside him the bell 
rang. No one could laugh more heartily 
at himself than Tommy, and none bore 
less malice to those who brought him to 
land. 

“ That, at any rate, makes me feel 
younger,” he said, candidly; and now the 
shyness was in full flight. 

“ Why ? ” asked Grizel, still watchful. 

“ It is so like the kind of thing you 
used to say to me when we were boy and 
girl. I used to enrage you very much, I 
fear,” he said, half gleefully. 

“ Yes,” she admitted with a smile, “you 
did.” 

“ And then how you rocked your arms 
at me, Grizel ! Do you remember ? ” 

She remembered it all so well ! 

“ Do you ever rock them now when 
people annoy you ? ” he asked. 

“ There has been no one to annoy me,” 
she replied, demurely, “ since you went 
away.” 

“ But I have come back,” Tommy said, 
looking hopefully at her arms. 

“ You see they take no notice of you.” 

“ They don’t remember me yet. As 
soon as they do they will cry out.” 

Grizel shook her head confidently, and 
in this she was pitting herself against 
Tommy, always a bold thing to do. 

“ I have been to see Corp’s baby,” he 
said, suddenly, and this was so impor- 
tant that she stopped in the middle of the 
road. 

“ What do you think of him ? ” she 
asked, quite anxiously. 

“ I thought,” replied Tommy, gravely, 
and making use of one of Grizel’s pet 
phrases, “ I thought he was just sweet.” 

“ Isn’t he ! ” she cried, and then she 
knew that he was making fun of her. Her 
arms rocked. 


Tommy and Grizel 


“ Hurray ! ” cried Tommy, “they rec- 
ognize me now ! Don’t be angry, Grizel,” 
he begged her, “ you taught me long 
ago what was the right thing to say about 
babies, and how could I be sure it was 
you until I saw your arms rocking.” 

“It was so like you,” she said, re- 
proachfully, “ to try to make me do it.” 

“ It was so unlike you,” he replied, craft- 
ily, “ to let me succeed. And, after all, 
Grizel, if I was horrid in the old days I 
always apologized.” 

“ Never ! ” she insisted. 

“Well, then,” said Tommy, handsome- 
ly, “ I do so now,” and then they both 
laughed gayly, and I think Grizel was not 
sorry that there was a little of the boy who 
had been horrid left in Tommy, just enough 
to know him by. 

“ He’ll be vain ? ” her aged maid, Mag- 
gy Ann, said curiously to her that evening. 
They were all curious about Tommy. 

“ I don’t know that he is vain,” Grizel 
replied, guardedly. 

“ If he’s no vain,” Maggy Ann retort- 
ed, “ he’s the first son of Adam it could 
be said o’. I jalouse it’s his bit book.” 

“He scarcely mentioned it.” 

“ Ay, then, it’s his beard.” 

Grizel was sure it was not that. 

“ Then it’ll be the women,” said Mag- 
gy Ann. 

“ Who knows ! ” said Grizel of the 
watchful eyes, but she smiled to herself. 
She thought not incorrectly that she knew 
one woman of whom Mr. Sandys was a 
little afraid. 

About the same time Tommy and El- 
speth were discussing her. Elspeth was 
in bed, and Tommy had come into the 
room to kiss her good-night — he had never 
once omitted doing it since they went to 
London, and he was always to do it, for 
neither of them was ever to marry. 

“ What do you think of her ? ” Elspeth 
asked. This was their great time for con- 
fidences. 

“ Of whom ? ” Tommy inquired. 

“ Grizel.” 

It behooved Tommy to be careful. 

“ Rather pretty, don’t you think ? ” he 
said, gazing at the ceiling. 

She was looking at him keenly, but he 
managed to deceive her. She was much 
relieved, and could say what was in her 
heart. “Tommy,” she said, “I think 


she is the most noble-looking girl I ever 
saw, and if she were not so masterful in 
her manner she would be beautiful.” It 
was nice of Elspeth to say it, for she and 
Grizel were never very great friends. 

Tommy brought down his eyes. “ Did 
you think as much of her as that ? ” he 
said. “ It struck me that her features 
were not quite classic. Her nose is a lit- 
tle tilted, is it not ? ” 

“ Some people like that kind of nose,” 
replied Elspeth. 

“ It is not classic,” Tommy said, sternly. 


CHAPTER VI 

GHOSTS THAT HAUNT THE DEN 

0 0 KING through the 
Tommy papers of this pe- 
riod, like a conscientious 
biographer, I find among 
them manuscripts that re- 
mind me how diligently he 
set to work the moment he went North, and 
also letters, which, if printed, would show 
you what a* wise and good man Tommy 
was. But while I was fingering those there 
floated from them to the floor a loose page, 
and when I saw that it was a chemist’s 
bill for oil and liniment I remembered some- 
thing I had nigh forgotten. “ Eureka ! ” 
I cried, “ I shall tell the story of the chem- 
ist’s bill, and some other biographer may 
print the letters.” 

Well, well, but to think that this scrap 
of paper should flutter into view to damn 
him after all those years ! 

The date is Saturday, May 28th, by 
which time Tommy had been a week in 
Thrums without doing anything very rep- 
rehensible, so far as Grizel knew. She 
watched for telltales as for a mouse to 
show at its hole, and at the worst, I 
think, she saw only its little head. That 
was when Tommy was talking beautifully 
to her about her dear doctor. He would 
have done wisely to avoid this subject, 
but he was so notoriously good at con- 
dolences that he had to say it. He had 
thought it out, you may remember, a year 
ago, but hesitated to post it, and since 
then it had lain heavily within him, as if 
it knew it was a good thing and pined to 
be up and strutting. 



Tommy and Grizel 


He said it with emotion ; evidently Dr. 
McQueen had been very dear to him, and 
any other girl would have been touched, 
but Grizel stiffened, and when he had fin- 
ished this is what she said, quite snappily : 

“ He never liked you.” 

Tommy was taken aback, but replied, 
with gentle dignity, “Do you think, Gri- 
zel, I would let that make any difference 
in my estimate of him ! ” 

“ But you never liked him,” said she, 
and now that he thought of it, this was 
true also. It was useless to say anything 
about the artistic instinct to her, she did 
not know what it was, and would have 
had plain words for it as soon as he told 
her. Please to picture Tommy picking up 
his beautiful speech and ramming it back 
into his pocket as if it were a rejected 
manuscript. 

“ I am sorry you should think so mean- 
ly of me, Grizel,” he said with manly for- 
bearance, and when she thought it all out 
carefully that night she decided that she 
had been hasty. She could not help 
watching Tommy for back-slidings, but, 
oh, it was sweet to her to decide that she 
had not found any. 

“It was I who was horrid,” she an- 
nounced to him frankly, and Tommy for- 
gave her at once. She offered him a pres- 
ent. “ When the doctor died I gave 
some of his things to his friends, it is the 
Scotch custom, you know. He had a 
new overcoat, it had been worn but two 
or three times, I should be so glad if you 
would let me give it to you for saying such 
sweet things about him. I think it will 
need very little alteration.” 

Thus very simply came into Tommy’s 
possession the coat that was to play so odd 
a part in his history. “But, oh, Grizel,” 
said he with mock reproach, “ you need 
not think that I don’t see through you ! 
Your deep design is to cover me up. 
You despise my velvet jacket ! ” 

“It does not — ” Grizel began, and 
stopped. 

“It is not in keeping with my dole- 
ful countenance,” said Tommy, candidly, 
“ that was what you were to say. Let 
me tell you a secret, Grizel, I wear it to 
spite my face. Sha’n’t give up my velvet 
jacket for anybody, Grizel ; not even for 
you.” He was in gay spirits because he 
knew she liked him again, and she saw 


that was the reason and it warmed her. 
She was least able to resist Tommy when 
he was most a boy, and it was actually 
watchful Grizel who proposed that he and 
she and Elspeth should revisit the den to- 
gether. How often since the days of their 
childhood had Grizel wandered it alone, 
thinking of those dear times, making up 
her mind that if ever Tommy asked her 
to go into the den again with him she 
would not go, the place was so much 
sweeter to her than it could be to him. 
And yet it was Grizel herself who was say- 
ing now, “ Let us go back to the den.” 

Tommy caught fire. “We sha’n’t go 
back,” he cried, defiantly, “ as men and 
women; let us be boy and girl again, 
Grizel, let us have that Saturday we 
missed long ago. I missed a Saturday on 
purpose, Grizel, so that we should have 
it now.” 

She shook her head wistfully, but she 
was glad that Tommy would fain have 
had one of the Saturdays back. Had he 
waxed sentimental she would not have 
gone a step of the way with him into the 
past, but when he was so full of glee she 
could take his hand and run back into it. 

“ But we must wait until evening,” 
Tommy said, “ until Corp is unharnessed ; 
we must not hurt the feelings of Corp by 
going back to the den without him.” 

“ How mean of me not to think of 
Corp ! ” Grizel cried ; but the next mo- 
ment she was glad she had not thought of 
him, it was so delicious to have proof that 
Tommy was more loyal. 

“ But we can’t turn back the clock, can 
we, Corp ? ” she said to the fourth of the 
conspirators, to which Corp replied, with 
his old sublime confidence, “ He’ll find a 
way.” 

And at first it really seemed as if Tom- 
my had found a way. They did not go 
to the den, four in a line or two abreast, 
nothing so common as that. In the wild 
spirits that mastered him he seemed to be 
the boy incarnate, and it was always said 
of Tommy by those who knew him best 
that if he leapt back into boyhood they 
had to jump with him. Those who knew 
him best were with him now. He took 
command of them in the old way. He 
whispered, as if Black Cathro were still 
on the prowl for him. Corp of Corp had 
to steal upon the den by way of the Silent 


Tommy and Grizel 


Pool, Grizel by the Queen’s Bower, El- 
speth up the burn side, Captain Stroke 
down the Reekie Brothpot. Grizel ’s arms 
rocked with delight in the dark, and she 
was on her way to the Cuttle Well, the 
try sting-place, before she came to and 
saw with consternation that Tommy had 
been ordering her about. 

She was quite a sedate young lady by 
the time she joined them at the well, and 
Tommy was the first to feel the change. 
“ Don’t you think this is all rather silly,” 
she said, when he addressed her as the 
Lady Griselda, and it broke the spell. 
Two girls shot up into women, a beard 
grew on Tommy’s chin, and Corp became 
a father. Grizel had blown Tommy’s 
pretty project to dust just when he was 
most gleeful over it, yet instead of bear- 
ing resentment he pretended not even to 
know that she was the culprit. 

“ Corp,” he said, ruefully, “ the game 
is up ! ” And “ Listen,” he said, when 
they had sat down, crushed, by the old 
Cuttle Well, “ do you hear anything ? ” 

It was a very still evening. “ I hear 
nocht,” said Corp, “ but the trickle o’ the 
burn. What did you hear ? ” 

“ I thought I heard a baby cry,” re- 
plied Tommy, with a groan, “ I think it 
was your baby, Corp. Did you hear it, 
Grizel ? ” 

She understood, and nodded. 

“ And you, Elspeth ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ My bairn ! ” cried the astounded 
Corp. 

“Yours,” said Tommy, reproachfully, 
“ and he has done for us. Ladies and 
gentlemen, the game is up.” 

Yes, the game was up, and she was 
glad, Grizel said to herself, as they made 
their melancholy pilgrimage of what had 
once been an enchanted land. But she 
felt that Tommy had been very forbearing 
to her, and that she did not deserve it. 
Undoubtedly he had ordered her about, 
but in so doing had he not been making 
half-pathetic sport of his old self, and was 
it with him that she was annoyed for or- 
dering, or with herself for obeying ? And 
why should she not obey when it was all 
a jest ? It was as if she still had some 
lingering fear of Tommy. Oh, she was 
ashamed of herself. She must say some- 
thing nice to him at once. About what? 


About his book, of course. How base of 
her not to have done so already, but how 
good of him to have overlooked her silence 
on that great topic. 

It was not ignorance of its contents that 
had kept her silent ; to confess the horrid 
truth, Grizel had read the book suspicious- 
ly, looking as through a microscope for 
something wrong, hoping not to find it, 
but looking minutely. The book, she 
knew, was beautiful, but it was the writer 
of the book she was peering for ; the 
Tommy she had known so well, what had 
he grown into ? In her heart she had ex- 
ulted from the first, in his success, and 
she should have been still more glad 
(should she not ?) to learn that his subject 
was woman, but no, that had irritated her, 
what was perhaps even worse, she had 
been still more irritated on hearing that 
the work was rich in sublime thoughts. 
As a boy, he. had maddened her most in 
his grandest moments. I can think of no 
other excuse for her. 

She would not accept it as an excuse for 
herself now. What she saw with scorn 
was that she was always suspecting the 
worst of Tommy. Very probably there 
was not a thought in the book that had 
been put in with his old complacent wag- 
gle of the head. “ Oh, am I not a won- 
der ! ” he used to cry when he did any- 
thing big, but that was no reason why she 
should suspect him of being conceited still. 
Very probably he really and truly felt 
what he wrote, felt it not only at the time, 
but also next morning. In his boyhood, 
Mr. Cathro had christened him Senti- 
mental Tommy, but he was a man now, 
and surely the sentimentalities in which 
he had dressed himself were flung aside 
forever like old suits of clothes. So Gri- 
zel decided eagerly, and she was on the 
point of telling him how proud she was 
of his book, when Tommy, who had thus 
far behaved so well, of a sudden went to 
pieces. 

He and Grizel were together, Elspeth 
was a little in front of them, walking with 
a gentleman who still wondered what they 
meant by saving that they had heard his 
baby cry. “For he’s no here,” Corp had 
said earnestly to them all, “though I’m 
awid for the time to come when I’ll be able 
to bring him to the den and let him see 
the Jacobites’ lair.” 


Tommy and Grizel 


There was nothing startling in this re- 
mark, so far as Grizel could discover, but 
she saw that it had an immediate and in- 
comprehensible effect on Tommy. First, 
he blundered in his talk as if he was think- 
ing deeply of something else, then his face 
shone as it had been wont to light up in 
his boyhood when he was suddenly en- 
raptured with himself, and lastly down his 
cheek and into his beard there stole a tear 
of agony. Obviously, Tommy was in 
deep woe for somebody or something. 

It was a chance for a true lady to show 
that womanly sympathy of which such ex- 
quisite things are said in the first work of 
T. Sandys, but it merely infuriated Gri- 
zel, who knew that Tommy did not feel 
nearly so deeply as she this return to the 
den, and therefore what was he in such 
distress about ? It was silly sentiment of 
some sort, she was sure of that. In the 
old days she would have asked him im- 
periously to tell her what was the matter 
with him, but she must not do that now, 
she dare not even rock her indignant 
arms, she could walk silently only by his 
side, longing fervently to shake him. 

He had quite forgotten her presence ; 
indeed, she was not really there, for a 
number of years had passed and he was 
Corp Shiach walking the den alone. To- 
morrow he was to bring his boy to show 
him the old lair and other fondly remem- 
bered spots, to-night he must revisit them 
alone. So he set out blithely, but to his 
bewilderment he could not find the lair. It 
had not been a tiny hollow where muddy 
water gathered, he remembered an im- 
pregnable fortress full of men whose ar- 
mor rattled as they came and went, so this 
could not be the lair. He had taken the 
wrong way to it, for the way was across a 
lagoon, up a deep-flowing river, then by 
horse till the rocky ledge terrified all four- 
footed things ; no, up a grassy slope had 
never been the way. He came night after 
night trying different ways, but he could 
not find the golden ladder, though all the 
time he knew that the lair lay somewhere 
over there. When he stood still and lis- 
tened he could hear the friends of his youth 
at play, and they seemed to be calling, 
“ Are you coming, Corp ? why does not 
Corp come back ? ” but he could never 
see them, and when he pressed forward 
their voices died away. Then at last he 


said, sadly to his boy, “ I shall never be 
able to show you the lair, for I cannot 
find the way to it,” and the boy was 
touched, and he said, “ Take my hand, 
father, and I will lead you to the lair ; I 
found the way long ago for myself.” 

It took Tammy about two seconds to 
see all this, and perhaps another half min- 
ute was spent in sad but satisfactory con- 
templation of it. Then he felt that for the 
best effect Corp’s home life was too com- 
fortable, so Gavinia ran away with a sol- 
dier. He was now so sorry for Corp that 
the tears rolled down. But at the same 
moment he saw how the effect could be 
still further heightened by doing away 
with his friend’s rude state of health, and 
he immediately jammed him between the 
buffers of two railway carriages and gave 
him a wooden leg. It was at this point 
that a lady who had kept her arms still too 
long rocked them frantically, then said, 
with cutting satire, “ Are you not feeling 
well, or have you hurt yourself ? You seem 
to be very lame,” and Tommy woke with 
a start to see that he was hobbling as if one 
of his legs were timber to the knee. 

“ It is nothing,” he said, modestly, 
“ something Corp said set me thinking. 
That is all.” 

He had told the truth, and if what he 
imagined was twenty times more real to 
him than what was really there, how 
could Tommy help it ? Indignant Grizel, 
however, who kept such a grip of facts, 
would make no such excuse for him. 

“ Elspeth ! ” she called. 

“ There is no need to tell her,” said 
Tommy, but Grizel was obdurate. 

“ Come here, Elspeth,” she cried, vin- 
dictively, “ something Corp said a moment 
ago has made your brother lame.” 

Tommy was lame, that was all Elspeth 
and Corp heard or could think of as they 
ran back to him. When did it happen ? 
Was he in great pain ? Had he fallen ? Oh, 
why had he not told Elspeth at once ? 

“ It is nothing,”. Tommy insisted, a lit- 
tle fiercely. 

“ He says so,” Grizel explained, “ not 
to alarm us. But he is suffering horribly. 
Just before I called to you his face was 
all drawn up in pain.” 

This made the sufferer wince. “ That 
was another twinge,” she said, promptly. 
“ What is to be done, Elspeth ? ” 


Tommy and Grizel 


“ I think I could carry him,” suggested 
Corp with a forward movement that made 
Tommy stamp his foot, the wooden one. 

“I am all right,” he told them, testily, 
and looking uneasily at Grizel. 

“ How brave of you to say so,” said 
she. * 

“ It is just like him,” Elspeth said, 
pleased with Grizel’s remark. 

“ I am sure it is,” Grizel said, so gra- 
ciously. 

It was very naughty of her. Had she 
given him a chance he would have ex- 
plained that it was all a mistake of Grizel’s. 
That had been his intention, but now a 
devil entered into Tommy and spoke for 
him. 

“ I must have slipped and sprained my 
ankle,” he said. “ It is slightly painful, 
but I shall be able to walk home all right, 
Corp, if you let me use you as a staff.” 

I think he was a little surprised to hear 
himself saying this, but as soon as it was 
said he liked it. He was Captain Stroke 
playing in the den again after all, and 
playing as well as ever. Nothing being 
so real to Tommy as pretence, I daresay 
he even began to feel his ankle hurting 
him. “ Gently,” he begged of Corp, with 
a gallant smile and clenching his teeth so 
that the pain should not make him cry 
out before the ladies. Thus with his lieu- 
tenant’s help did Stroke manage to reach 
Aaron’s house, making light of his mishap, 
assuring them cheerily that he should be 
all right to-morrow and carefully avoiding 


Grizel’s eye, though he wanted very much 
to know what she thought of him (and of 
herself) now. 

There were moments when she did not 
know what to think, and that always dis- 
tressed Grizel, though it was a state of 
mind with which Tommy could keep on 
very friendly terms. The truth seemed 
too monstrous for belief. Was it possible 
she had misjudged him ? Perhaps he 
really had sprained his ankle. But he had 
made no pretence of that at first, and be- 
sides, yes, she could not be mistaken, it 
was the other leg. 

She soon let him see what she was think- 
ing. “ I am afraid it is too serious a case 
for me,” she said, in answer to a sugges- 
tion from Corp, who had a profound faith 
in her medical skill, ‘‘but if you like — ” 
she was addressing Tommy now — “I 
shall call at Dr. Gemmell’s on my way 
home, and ask him to come to you.” 

“ There is no necessity, a night’s rest is 
all I need,” he answered, hastily. 

“Well, you know best,” she said, and 
there was a look on her face which Thom- 
as Sandys could endure from no woman. 

“ On second thoughts,” he said, “ I 
think it would be advisable to have a 
doctor. Thank you very much, Grizel. 
Corp, can you help me to lift my foot on 
to that chair. Softly — ah ! — ugh ! ” 

His eyes did not fall before hers. “And 
would you ‘mind asking him to come at 
once, Grizel ? ” he said, sweetly. 

She went straight to the doctor. 



TOMMY AND GRIZEL 


BY J. M. BARRIE 

Author of “ Sentimental Tommy,” “ The Little Minister,” etc. 


CHAPTER VII 


THE BEGINNING OF THE DUEL 



T was among old Dr. Mc- 
Queen’s sayings that when 
he met a man who was 
certified to be in no way 
remarkable he wanted to 
give three cheers. There 
are few of them, even in a little place 
like Thrums, but David Gemmell was one. 

So McQueen had always said, but 
Grizel was not so sure. “He is very 
good-looking and he does not know it,” 
she would point out, “oh, what a re- 
markable man ! ” 

She had known him intimately for 
nearly six years now, ever since he be- 
came the old doctor’s assistant, on the 
day when, in the tail of some others, he 
came to Thrums aged twenty-one to ap- 
ply for the post. Grizel had even helped 
to choose him, she had a quaint recol- 
lection of his being submitted to her by 
McQueen, who told her to look him over 
and say whether he would do — an odd 
position in which to place a fourteen-year- 
old girl, but Grizel had taken it most seri- 
ously, and indeed of the two men only 
Gemmell dared to laugh. 

“ You should not laugh when it is so im- 
portant,” she said, gravely ; and he stood 
abashed, although I believe he chuckled 
again when he retired to his room for the 
night. She was in that room next morn- 
ing as soon as he had left it, to smell the 
curtains (he smoked) and see whether he 
folded his things up neatly and used both 
the brush and the comb, but did not use 
pomade, and slept with his window open, 
and really took a bath instead of merely 
pouring the water into it and laying the 
sponge on top — (oh, she knew them !) 
— and her decision after some days was 
that though far from perfect, he would 
do, if he loved her dear darling doctor 


sufficiently. By this time David was 
openly afraid of her, which Grizel noticed, 
and took to be in the circumstances a 
satisfactory sign. 

She watched him narrowly for the next 
year, and after that she ceased to watch 
him at all. She was like a congregation 
become so sure of its minister’s soundness 
that it can risk going to sleep. To begin 
with, he was quite incapable of pretending 
to be anything he was not. Oh, how 
unlike a boy she had once known! His 
manner, like his voice, was quiet ; being 
himself the son of a doctor, he did not 
dodder through life amazed at the splendid 
eminence he had climbed to, which is the 
weakness of Scottish students when they 
graduate, and often for fifty years after- 
wards. How sweet he was to Dr. Mc- 
Queen, never forgetting the respect due 
to gray hairs, never hinting that the new 
school of medicine knew many things that 
were hidden from the old, and always 
having the sense to support McQueen 
when she was scolding him for his numer- 
ous naughty ways. When the old doctor 
came home now on cold nights it was 
not with his cravat in his pocket, and 
Grizel knew very well who had put it 
round his neck. McQueen never had the 
humiliation, so distressing to an old doc- 
tor, of being asked by patients to send 
his assistant instead of coming himself. 
He thought they preferred him and 
twitted David about it, but Grizel knew 
that David had sometimes to order them to 
prefer the old man. She knew that when 
he said good-night and was supposed to 
have gone to his lodgings, he was proba- 
bly off to some poor house where, if not 
he, a tired woman must sit the long night 
through by a sufferer’s bedside, and she 
realized with joy that his chief reason for 
not speaking of such things was that he 
took them as part of his natural work and 
never even knew that he was kind. He 
was not specially skilful, he had taken no 


Tommy and Grizel 


honors either at school or college, and 
he considered himself to be a very ordi- 
nary young man. If you had said that 
on this point you disagreed with him, his 
manner probably would have implied that 
he thought you a bit of an ass. 

When a new man arrives in Thrums, 
the women come to their doors to see 
whether he is good-looking. They said 
No of Tommy when he came back, but it 
had been an emphatic Yes for Dr. Gem- 
mell. He was tall and very slight, and 
at twenty-seven as at twenty-one, despite 
the growth of a heavy mustache, there 
was a boyishness about his appearance, 
which is, I think, what women love in a 
man more than anything else. They are 
drawn to him by it, and they love him out 
of pity when it goes. I suppose it brings 
back to them some early, beautiful stage 
in the world’s history when men and wom- 
en played together without fear. Per- 
haps it lay in his smile, which was so 
winning that wrinkled old dames spoke of 
it, who had never met the word before, 
smiles being little known in Thrums, where 
in a workaday world we find it suffi- 
cient either to laugh or to look thrawn. 
His dark curly hair was what Grizel was 
most suspicious of ; he must be vain of that, 
she thought, until she discovered that he 
was quite sensitive to its being mentioned, 
having ever detested his curls as an eye- 
sore and in his boyhood clipped savagely 
to the roots. He had such a firm chin, 
if there had been another such chin going 
a-begging, I should have liked to clap it 
on to Tommy Sandys. 

Tommy Sandys ! All this time we 
have been neglecting that brave sufferer, 
and while we talk his ankle is swelling 
and swelling. Well, Grizel was not so in- 
considerate, for she walked very fast and 
with an exceedingly determined mouth to 
Dr. Gemmell’s lodgings. He was still in 
lodgings, having refused to turn Grizel 
out of her house, though she had offered 
to let it to him. She left word, the doc- 
tor not being in, that he was wanted at 
once by Mr. Sandys, who had sprained 
his ankle. 

Now, then, Tommy ! 

For an hour, perhaps until she went to 
bed, she remained merciless. She saw 
the quiet doctor with the penetrating eyes 
examining that ankle, asking a few ques- 


tions, and looking curiously at his patient. 
Then she saw him lift his hat and walk 
out of the house. 

It gave her pleasure, no, it did not. 
While she thought of this Tommy she de- 
spised, there came in front of him a boy 
who had played with her long ago when 
no other child would play with her, and 
now he said, ‘‘You have grown cold to 
me, Grizel,” and she nodded assent, and 
little wells of water rose to her eyes and 
lay there because she had nodded assent. 

She had never liked Dr. Gemmell so 
little as when she saw him approaching 
her house next morning. The surgery 
was still attached to it, and very often he 
came from there, his visiting-book in his 
hand, to tell her of his patients, even to 
consult her ; indeed to talk to Grizel about 
his work without consulting her would 
have been difficult, for it was natural to 
her to decide what was best for every- 
body. These consultations were very un- 
professional, but from her first coming to 
the old doctor’s house she had taken it 
as a matter of course that in his practice, 
as in affairs relating to his boots and but- 
tons, she should tell him what to do and 
he should do it. McQueen had intro- 
duced his assistant to this partnership 
half-shamefacedly and with a cautious 
wink over the little girl’s head, and Gem- 
mell fell into line at once, showing her 
his new stethoscope as gravely as if he 
must abandon it at once, should not she 
approve ; which fine behavior, however, 
was quite thrown away on Grizel, who, had 
he conducted himself otherwise, would 
merely have wondered what was the mat- 
ter with the man ; and as she was eighteen 
or more before she saw that she had ex- 
ceeded her duties, it was then, of course, 
too late to cease" doing it. 

She knew now how good, how forbear- 
ing he had been to the little girl, and that 
it was partly because he was acquainted 
with her touching history. The grave 
courtesy with which he had always treated 
her, and which had sometimes given her 
as a girl a secret thrill of delight, it was 
so sweet to Grizel to be respected, she 
knew now to be less his natural manner 
to women than something that came to 
him in her presence because he who knew 
her so well, thought her worthy of defer- 
ence, and it helped her more, far more, 


Tommy and Grizel 


than if she had seen it turn to love. Yet 
as she received him in her parlor now, 
her too spotless parlor, for not even the 
ashes in the grate were visible, which 
is a mistake, she was not very friendly. 
He had discovered what Tommy was, 
and as she had been the medium she 
could not blame him for that, but how 
could he look as calm as ever when such 
a deplorable thing had happened ? 

“ What you say is true, I knew it before 
I asked you to go to him, and I knew 
you would find it out, but please to re- 
member that he is a man of genius, whom 
it is not for such as you to judge.” 

That was the sort of haughty remark 
she held ready for him while they talked 
of other cases, but it was never uttered, 
for by and by he said : 

“ And then there is Mr. Sandys’s ankle. 
A nasty accident, I am afraid.” 

Was he jesting ? She looked at him 
sharply. “ Have you not been to see 
him yet ? ” she asked. 

He thought she had misunderstood him. 
He had been to see Mr. Sandys twice, 
both last night and this morning. 

And he was sure it was a sprain ? 

Unfortunately it was something worse, 
dislocation. Further mischief might show 
itself presently. 

“ Hemorrhage into the i eighboring 
joint on inflammation ? ” she asked, scorn- 
fully. 

“ Yes.” 

Grizel turned away from him. “ I think 
not,” she said. 

Well, possibly not, if Mr. Sandys was 
careful and kept his foot from the ground 
for the next week. The doctor did not 
know that she was despising him, and he 
proceeded to pay Tommy a compliment. 
“ I had to reduce the dislocation, of 
course,” he told her, “ and he bore the 
wrench splendidly, though there is almost 
no pain more acute.” 

“ Did he ask you to tell me that ? ” 
Grizel was thirsting to inquire, but she 
forbore. Unwittingly, however, the doc- 
tor answered the question. “ I could see,” 
he said, “that Mr. Sandys made light 
of his sufferings to save his sister pain. 
I cannot remember ever having seen a 
brother and sister so attached.” 

That was quite true, Grizel admitted to 
herself. In all her recollections of Tommy 


she could not remember one critical mo- 
ment in which Elspeth had not been fore- 
most in his thoughts. It passed through 
her head, “ Even now he must make sure 
that Elspeth is in peace of mind before he 
can care to triumph over me,” and she 
would perhaps have felt less bitter had he 
put his triumph first. 

His triumph ! Oh, she would show 
him whether it was a triumph. He had 
destroyed forever her faith in David 
Gemmell ; the quiet, observant doctor, 
who had such an eye for the false, had 
been deceived as easily as all the others, 
and it made her feel very lonely ; but, 
never mind, Tommy should find out, and 
that within the hour, that there was one 
whom he could not cheat. Her first im- 
pulse, always her first impulse, was to go 
straight to his side and tell him what she 
thought of him; her second, which was 
neater, was to send by messenger her 
compliments to Mr. and Miss Sandys, and 
would they, if not otherwise, engaged, 
come and have tea with her that after- 
noon? Not a word in the note about the 
ankle, but a careful sentence to the effect 
that she had seen Dr. Gemmell to-day and 
proposed asking him to meet them. 

Maggy Ann, who had conveyed the 
message, came back with the reply. 
Elspeth regretted that they could not ac- 
cept Grizel’s invitation, owing to the acci- 
dent to her brother being very much more 
serious than Grizel seemed to think. “ I 
can’t understand,” Elspeth added, “ why 
Dr. Gemmell did not tell you this when 
he saw you.” 

“ Is it a polite letter ? ” asked inquisi- 
tive Maggy Ann, and Grizel assured her 
that it was most polite. “ I hardly ex- 
pected it,” said the plain-spoken dame, 
“for I’m thinking by their manner it’s 
more than can be said of yours.” 

“ I merely invited them to come to 
tea.” 

“ And him wi’ his leg broke ! Did you 
no ken he was lying on chairs ? ” 

“ I did not know it was so bad as that, 
Maggy Ann. So my letter seemed to 
annoy him, did it ? ” said Grizel, eagerly 
and I fear well pleased. 

“ It angered her most terrible,” said 
Maggy Ann, “ but no him. He gave a 
sort of a laugh when he read it.” 

“ A laugh ! ” 


Tommy and Grizel 


“ Ay, and syne she says, * It is most 
heartless of Grizel ; she does not even ask 
how you are to-day ; one would think she 
did not know of the accident/ and she 
says, * I have a good mind to write her a 
very stiff letter/ and says he in a noble, 
melancholic voice, ‘ We must not hurt 
Grizel’s feelings/ he says, and she says, 
‘ Grizel thinks it was nothing because you 
bore it so cheerfully ; oh, how little she 
knows you/ she says, and ‘You are too 
forgiving/ she says ; and says he, ‘ If I 
have anything to forgive Grizel for I for- 
give her willingly/ and syne she quieted 
down and wrote the letter.” 

Forgive her ! Oh, how it enraged Gri- 
zel. How like the Tommy of old to put 
it in that way. There never had been 
a boy so good at forgiving people for 
his own crimes, and he always looked so 
modest when he did it. He was reclining 
on his chairs at this moment, she was sure 
he was, forgiving her in every sentence. 
She could have endured it more easily had 
she felt sure that he was seeing himself as 
he was, but she remembered him too well 
to have any hope of that. 

She put on her bonnet and took it off 
again • a terrible thing, remember, for 
Grizel to be in a state of indecision. For 
the remainder of that day she was not 
wholly inactive. Meeting Dr. Gemmell 
in the street she impressed upon him the 
advisability of not allowing Mr. Sandys 
to move for at least a week. 

“He might take a drive in a day or two,” 
the doctor thought, “ with his sister.” 

“ He would be sure to use his foot,” 
Grizel maintained, “ if you once let him 
rise from his chair ; you know they all 
do,” and Gemmell agreed that she was 
right. So she managed to give Tommy 
as irksome a time as possible. 

But next day she called. To go through 
another day without letting him see how 
despicable she thought him was beyond 
her endurance. Elspeth was a little stiff 
at first, but Tommy received her heartily, 
and with nothing in his manner to show 
that she had hurt his finer feelings. His 
leg (the wrong leg, as Grizel remembered 
at once) was extended on a chair in front 
of him, but instead of nursing it ostenta- 
tiously as so many would have done, he 
made humorous remarks at its expense. 
“ The fact is,” he said, cheerily, “ that so 


long as I don’t move I never felt better in 
my life. And I dare say I could walk al- 
most as well as either of you, only my 
tyrant of a doctor won’t let me try.” 

“He told me you had behaved splen- 
didly,” said Grizel, “while he was reduc- 
ing the dislocation. How brave you are ! 
You could not have endured more stoic- 
ally though there had been nothing the 
matter with it.” 

“It was soon over,” Tommy replied, 
lightly. “ I think Elspeth suffered more 
than I.” 

Elspeth told the story of his heroism. 
“ I could not stay in the room,” she said, 
“it was too terrible,” and Grizel despised 
too tender-hearted Elspeth for that, she 
was so courageous at facing pain herself. 
But Tommy had guessed that Elspeth was 
trembling behind the door, and he had 
called out, “ Don’t cry, Elspeth I am all 
right, it is nothing at all.” 

“ How noble ! ” was Grizel’s com- 
ment when she heard of this, and then 
Elspeth was her friend again, insisted on 
her staying to tea, and went into the 
kitchen to prepare it. Aaron was out. 

The two were alone now, and in the 
circumstances some men would have given 
the lady the opportunity to apologize, if 
such was her desire. But Tommy’s was 
a more generous nature, his manner was 
that of one less sorry to be misjudged than 
anxious that Grizel should not suffer too 
much from remorse, if she had asked his 
pardon then and there I am sure he would 
have replied, “ Right willingly, Grizel,” and 
begged her not to give another thought to 
the matter. What is of more importance 
Grizel was sure of this also, and it was the 
magnanimity of him that especially an- 
noyed her. There seemed to be no dis- 
turbing it. Even when she said, “ Which 
foot is it ? ” he answered, “The one on 
the chair,” quite graciously as if she had 
asked a natural question. 

Grizel pointed out that the other foot 
must be tired of being a foot in waiting. 
It had got a little exercise, Tommy replied 
lightly, last night and again this morning 
when it had helped to convey him to and 
from his bed. 

Had he hopped ? she asked, brutally. 

No, he said, he had shuffled along. 
Half rising, he attempted to show her hu- 
morously how he walked nowadays, tried 


Tommy and Grizel 


not to wince, but had to. Ugh, that was 
a twinge ! Grizel sarcastically offered her 
assistance and he took her shoulder grate- 
fully ; they crossed the room, a tedious 
journey. “ Now let me see if you can 
manage alone,” she says, and suddenly 
deserts him. 

He looked rather helplessly across the 
room ; few sights are so pathetic as the 
strong man of yesterday feeling that the 
chair by the fire is a distant object to-day. 
Tommy knew how pathetic it was, but 
Grizel did not seem to know. 

“Try it,” she said, encouragingly, “it 
will do you good.” 

He got as far as the table and clung to 
it, his teeth set. Grizel clapped her hands. 
“ Excellently done ! ” she said, with fell 
meaning, and recommended him to move 
up and down the room for a little, he 
would feel ever so much the better for it 
afterwards. 

The pain — was — considerable, he said. 
Oh, she saw that, but he had already 
proved himself so good at bearing pain, 
and the new school of surgeons held that 
it was wise to exercise an injured limb. 

Even then it was not a reproachful 
glance that Tommy gave her, though there 
was some sadness in it. He moved across 
the room several times, a groan occasion- 
ally escaping him. “ Admirable ! ” said 
his critic, “ bravo ! would you like to stop 
now ? ” 

“ Not until you tell me to,” he said, de- 
terminedly, but with a gasp. 

“ It must be dreadfully painful,” she re- 
plied, coldly, “ but I should like you to go 
on,” and he went on until suddenly he 
seemed to have lost the power to lift his 
feet. His body swayed, there was an 
appealing look on his face. “ Don’t be 
afraid, you won’t fall,” said Gfizel, but 
she had scarcely said it when he fainted 
dead away, and went down at her feet. 

“ Oh, how dare you ! ” she cried in sud- 
den flame, and she drew back from him. 
But after a moment she knew that he was 
shamming no longer. Or she knew it and 
yet could not quite believe it, for hurrying 
out of the room for water she had no 
sooner passed the door than she swiftly 
put back her head as if to catch him un- 
awares. But he lay motionless. 

The sight of her dear brother on the 
floor paralyzed Elspeth, who could weep 


only for him and call to him to look at 
her and speak to her, but in such an 
emergency Grizel was as useful as any 
doctor and by the time Gemmell arrived 
in haste the invalid was being brought to. 
The doctor was a practical man who did 
not ask questions while there was some- 
thing better to do ; had he asked any as 
he came in Grizel would certainly have 
said : “ He wanted to faint to make me 
believe he really has a bad ankle, and 
somehow he managed to do it,” and if the 
doctor had replied that people can’t faint 
by wishing, she would have said that he 
did not know Mr. Sandys. 

But with few words Gemmell got his 
patient back to the chairs, and proceeded 
to undo the bandages that were round his 
ankle. Grizel stood by, assisting silently ; 
she had often assisted the doctors, but 
never with that scornful curl of the lip. 
So the bandages were removed and the 
ankle laid bare. It was very much swol- 
len and discolored, and when Grizel saw 
this she gave a little cry and the ointment 
she was holding slipped from her hand ; 
for the first time since he came to Thrums 
she had failed Gemmell at a patient’s side. 

“ I had not expected it to be — like this,” 
she said, in a quivering voice, when he 
looked at her in surprise. 

“It will look much worse to-morrow,” 
he assured them, grimly. “ I can’t under- 
stand, Miss Sandys, how this came about.” 

“ Miss Sandys was not in the room,” 
said Grizel, abjectly, “ but I was, and I 

y> 

Tommy’s face was begging her to stop. 
He was still faint and in pain, but all 
thought of himself left him in his desire to 
screen her. “ I owe you an apology, doc- 
tor,” he said, quickly, “for disregarding 
your instructions. It was entirely my own 
fault, I would try to walk.” 

“ Every step must have been agony,” 
the doctor rapped out, and Grizel shud- 
dered. 

“ Not nearly so bad as that,” Tommy 
said, for her sake. 

“ Agony,” insisted the doctor, as if for 
once he enjoyed the word. “ It was a 
mad thing to do, as surely you could 
guess, Grizel. Why did you not prevent 
him ? ” 

“ She certainly did her best to stop me,” 
Tommy said, hastily, “but I suppose I had 


Tommy and Grizel 


some insane fit on me, for do it I would. 
I am very sorry, doctor.” 

His face was wincing with pain and he 
spoke faintly, but the doctor was still an- 
gry. He felt that there was something 
between these two which he did not un- 
derstand, and it was strange to him and 
unpleasant to find Grizel unable to speak 
for herself. I think he doubted Tommy 
from that hour. All he said in reply, how- 
ever, was, “ It is unnecessary to apologize 
to me ; you yourself are the only sufferer.” 

But was Tommy the only sufferer? 
Gemmell left, and Elspeth followed him to 
listen to those precious words which doc- 
tors drop, as from a vial, on the other side 
of a patient’s door, and then Grizel, who 
had been standing at the window with 
head averted, turned slowly round and 
looked at the man she had wronged. Her 
arms, which had been hanging rigid, the 
fists closed, went out to him to implore for- 
giveness. I don’t know how she held her- 
self up and remained dry-eyed, her whole 
being wanted so much to sink by the side 
of his poor tortured foot and bathe it in 
her tears. 

So, you see, he had won ; nothing to 
do now but forgive her beautifully. Go 
on, Tommy, you are good at it. 

But only the unexpected came out of 
Tommy. Never was there a softer heart. 
In London the old lady who sold matches 
at the street-corner had got all his pence ; 
had he heard her, or any other, mourning 
a son sentenced to the gallows, he would 
immediately have wondered whether he 
might take the condemned one’s place. 
(What a speech Tommy could have de- 
livered from the scaffold !) There was 
nothing he would not jump at doing for a 
woman in distress, except perhaps destroy 
his note-book. And Grizel was in an- 
guish, she was his suppliant, his brave 
lonely little playmate of the past, the no- 
ble girl of to-day, Grizel whom he liked so 
much. As through a magnifying-glass he 
saw her top-heavy with remorse for life, 
unable to sleep of nights, crushed and 

He was not made of the stuff that could 
endure it. The truth must out. “ Grizel,” 
he said, impulsively, “ you have nothing 
to be sorry for. You were quite right. I 
did not hurt my foot that night in the 
den, but afterwards, when I was alone, 
before the doctor came. I ricked it here, 


intentionally, in the door. It sounds 
incredible, but I set my teeth and did it, 
Grizel, because you had challenged me to 
a duel, and I would not give in.” 

As soon as it was out he was proud of 
himself for having the generosity to con- 
fess it. He looked at Grizel expectantly. 

Yes, it sounded incredible, and yet she 
saw that it was true. As Elspeth returned 
at that moment Grizel could say noth- 
ing, she stood looking at him only over 
her high collar of fur. Tommy actually 
thought that she was admiring him. 

CHAPTER VIII 

WHAT GRIZEL’S EYES SAID 

O be the admired of wom- 
en, how Tommy had 
fought for it since first he 
drank of them in Pym’s 
sparkling pages ! To some 
it seems to be easy, but to 
him it was a labor of Sisyphus. Every- 
thing had been against him. But he 
concentrated. No labor was too hercu- 
lean ; he was prepared if necessary to 
walk round the world to get to the other 
side of the wall across which some men 
can step. And he did take a roundabout 
way. It is my opinion, for instance, that 
he wrote his book in order to make a be- 
ginning with the ladies. 

That as it may be, at all events he 
is on the right side of the wall now, and 
here is even Grizel looking wistfully at 
him. Had she admired him for some- 
thing he was not (and a good many of 
them did that) he would have been ill- 
satisfied; he wanted her to think him 
splendid because he was splendid, and 
the more he reflected the more clearly he 
saw that he had done a big thing. How 
many men would have had the courage 
to rack their foot as he had done ? (He 
shivered when he thought of it.) And 
even of these Spartans how many would 
have let the reward slip through their 
fingers rather than wound the feelings of 
a girl ? These had not been his thoughts 
when he made confession, he had spoken 
on an impulse, but now that he could step 
out and have a look at himself, he saw 
that this made it a still bigger thing. He 




Tommy and Grizel 


was modestly pleased that he had got not 
only Grizel’s admiration but earned it, 
and he was very kind to her when next 
she came to see him. No one could be 
more kind to them than he when they 
admired him. He had the most grateful 
heart, had our Tommy. 

When next she came to see him ! That 
was while his ankle still nailed him to the 
chair, a fortnight or so during which 
Tommy was at his best, sending gracious 
messages by Elspeth to the many who 
called to inquire, and writing hard at his 
new work, pad on knee, so like a brave 
soul whom no unmerited misfortune could 
subdue, that it would have done you good 
merely to peep at him through the win- 
dow. Grizel came several times, and the 
three talked very ordinary things, mostly 
reminiscences ; she was as much a plain- 
spoken princess as ever, but often he 
found her eyes fixed on him wistfully, 
and he knew what they were saying, 
they spoke so eloquently that he was a 
little nervous lest Elspeth should notice. 
It was delicious to Tommy to feel that 
there was this little unspoken something 
between him and Grizel ; he half regretted 
that the time could not be far distant 
when she must put it into words, as soon, 
say, as Elspeth left the room, an exquisite 
moment no doubt, but it would be the 
plucking of the flower. 

Don’t think that Tommy conceived 
Grizel to be in love with him. On my sa- 
cred honor, that would have horrified him. 

Curiously enough she did not take the 
first opportunity Elspeth gave her of tell- 
ing him in words how much she admired 
his brave confession. She was so honest 
that he expected her to begin the moment 
the door closed, and now that the artistic 
time had come for it he wanted it, but no. 
He was not hurt, but he wondered at her 
shyness and cast about for the reason ; 
he cast far back into the past, and caught 
a little girl who had worn this same wist- 
ful face when she admired him most. 
He compared those two faces of the 
anxious girl and the serene woman, and 
in the wistfulness that sometimes lay on 
them both they looked alike. Was it 
possible that the fear of him which the 
years had driven out of the girl still lived 
a ghost’s life to haunt the woman ? 

At once he overflowed with pity. As a 


boy he had exulted in Grizel’s fear of him, 
as a man he could feel only the pain of it. 
There was no one, he thought, less to be 
dreaded of a woman than he — oh, so sure 
Tommy was of that ! And he must lay 
this ghost, he gave his whole heart to the 
laying of it. 

Few men, and never a woman, could 
do a fine thing so delicately as he, but of 
course it included a divergence from the 
truth, for to Tommy afloat on a generous 
scheme the truth was a buoy marking 
sunken rocks. She had feared him in her 
childhood, as he knew well; he therefore 
proceeded to prove to her that she had 
never feared him, she had thought him 
masterful, and all his reminiscences now 
went to show that it was she who had been 
the masterful one. 

“ You must often laugh now,” he said, 
“to remember how I feared you. The 
memory of it makes me afraid of you still. 
I assure you I joukit back, as Corp would 
say, that day I saw you in church. It 
was the instinct of self - preservation. 
‘ Here comes Grizel to lord it over me 
again,’ I heard something inside me say- 
ing. You called me masterful, and yet I 
had always to give in to you. That shows 
what a gentle, yielding girl you were, and 
what a masterful character I was ! ” 

His intention, you see, was, without let- 
ting Grizel know what he was at, to make 
her think he had forgotten certain un- 
pleasant incidents in their past, so that 
seeing they were no longer anything to 
him, they might the sooner become noth- 
ing to her. And she believed that he had 
forgotten and she was glad. She smiled 
when he told her to go on being masterful, 
for old acquaintance had made him like 
it. Hers, indeed, was a masterful nature, 
she could not help it ; and if the time ever 
came when she must help it, the glee of 
living would be gone from her. 

She did continue to be masterful, to a 
greater extent than Tommy, thus nobly 
behaving, was prepared for, and his shock 
came to him at the very moment when he 
was modestly expecting to receive the 
prize. She had called when Elspeth hap- 
pened to be out, and though now able to 
move about the room with the help of a 
staff he was still an interesting object. 
He saw that she thought so, and perhaps 
it made him hobble slightly more, not 


Tommy and Grizel 


vaingloriously, but because he was such 
an artist. He ceased to be an artist sud- 
denly, however, when Grizel made this 
unexpected remark : 

“ How vain you are ! ” 

Tommy sat down, quite pale. “Did 
you come here to say that to me, Grizel ?” 
he inquired, and she nodded frankly over 
her high collar of fur. He knew it was 
true as Grizel said it, but though taken 
aback he could bear it, for she was look- 
ing wistfully at him, and he knew well 
what GrizeFs wistful look meant ; so long 
as women admired him Tommy could 
bear anything from them. “ God knows I 
have little to be vain of,” he said, hum- 
bly. 

“ Those are the people who are most 
vain,” she replied, and he laughed a short 
laugh, which surprised her, she was so 
very serious. 

“Your methods are so direct,” he ex- 
plained. “ But of what am I vain, Gri- 
zel ? Is it my book ? ” 

“ No,” she answered, “not about your 
book but about meaner things ; what else 
could have made you dislocate your ankle 
rather than admit that you had been rath- 
er silly ? ” 

Now silly is no word to apply to a gen- 
tleman, and despite his forgiving nat- 
ure, Tommy was a little disappointed in 
Grizel. 

“ I suppose it was a silly thing to do,” 
he said, with just a touch of stiffness. 

“It was an ignoble thing,” said she, 
sadly. 

“ I see. And I myself am the meaner 
thing than the book, am I ? ” 

“ Are you not ? ” she asked, so eagerly 
that he laughed again. 

“It is the first compliment you have 
paid my book,” he pointed out. 

“ I like the book very much,” she an- 
swered, gravely ; “ no one can be more 
proud of your fame than I. You are 
hurting me very much by pretending to 
think that it is a pleasure to me to find 
fault with you.” 

There was no getting past the honesty 
of her, and he was touched by it. Be- 
sides, she did admire him, and that, after 
all, is the great thing. “ Then why say 
such things, Grizel ? ” he replied, good- 
naturedly. 

“ But if they are true ? ” 


“ Still let us avoid them,” said he, and 
at that she was most distressed. 

“ It is so like what you used to say 
when you were a boy ! ” she cried. 

“ You are so anxious to have me grow 
up,” he replied, with proper dolefulness. 
“ If you like the book, Grizel, you must 
have patience with the kind of thing that 
produced it. That night in the den when 
I won your scorn, I was in the preliminary 
stages of composition. At such times an 
author should be locked up, but I had got 
out, you see. I was so enamoured of my 
little fancies that I forgot I was with you. 
No wonder you were angry.” 

“ I was not angry with you for forget- 
ting me,” she said, sharply. (There was 
no catching Grizel, however artful you 
were.) “ But you were sighing to your- 
self, you were looking as tragic as if some 
dreadful calamity had occurred ” 

“The idea that had suddenly come to 
me was a touching one,” he said. 

“ But you looked triumphant, too.” 

“ That was because I saw I could make 
something of it.” 

“ Why did you walk as if you were 
lame ? ” 

“ The man I was thinking of,” Tommy 
explained, “ had broken his leg. I don’t 
mind telling you that it was Corp.” 

He ought to have minded telling her, 
for it could add only to her indignation, 
but he was too conceited to give weight 
to that. 

“ Corp’s leg was not broken,” said prac- 
tical Grizel. 

“ I broke it for him,” replied Tommy, 
and, when he had explained, her eyes ac- 
cused him of heartlessness. 

“If it had been my own,” he said, in 
self-defence, “ it should have gone crack 
just the same.” 

“ Poor Gavinia ! Had you no feeling 
for her ? ” 

“ Gavinia was not there,” Tommy re- 
plied, triumphantly. “ She had run off 
with a soldier.” 

“ You dared to conceive that ? ” 

“ It helped.” 

Grizel stamped her foot. “ You could 
take away dear Gavinia’s character with 
a smile ! ” 

“ On the contrary,” said Tommy, “my 
heart bled for her. Did you not notice 
that I was crying ? ” But he could not 


Tommy and Grizel 


make Grizei smile, so to please her he said, 
with a smile that was not very sincere, “I 
wish I were different, but that is how ideas 
come to me, at least all those that are of 
any value.” 

“ Surely you could fight against them, 
and drive them away ? ” 

This to Tommy, who held out sugar 
to them to lure them to him ! But still 
he treated her with consideration. 

“ That would mean my giving up writ- 
ing altogether, Grizel,” he said, kindly. 

“ Then why not give it up ? ” 

Really ! But she admired him, and 
still he bore with her. 

“ I don’t like the book,” she said, “if it 
is written at such a cost.” 

“ People say the book has done them 
good, Grizel.” 

“What does that matter if it does you 
harm ?” In her eagerness to persuade 
him her words came pell-mell. “ If writ- 
ing makes you live in such an unreal world 
it must do you harm. I see now what 
Mr. Cathro meant long ago when he called 
you Senti ” 

Tommy winced. “ I remember what 
Mr. Cathro called me,” he said, with sur- 
prising hauteur for such a good-natured 
man. “But he does not call me that 
now. No one calls me that now except 
you, Grizel.” 

“ What does that matter,” she replied, 
distressfully, “ if it is true ? In the def- 
inition of sentimentality in the diction- 
ary ” 

He rose, indignantly. “You have been 
looking me up in the dictionary, have you, 
Grizel ?” 

“Yes, the night you told me you had 
hurt your ankle intentionally.” 

He laughed without mirth now. “ I 
thought you had put that down to vanity.” 

“ I think,” she said, “ it was vanity that 
gave you the courage to do it,” and he 
liked one word in this remark. 

“ Then you do give me credit for a lit- 
tle courage ? ” 

“ I think you could do the most coura- 
geous things,” she told him, “so long as 
there was no real reason why you should 
do them.” 

It was a shot that rang the bell ; oh, our 
Tommy heard it ringing. But to do him 
justice he bore no malice, he was proud, 
rather, of Grizel’s marksmanship. “ At 


least,” he said, meekly, “ it was coura- 
geous of me to tell you the truth in the 
end?” but to his surprise she shook her 
head. 

“No,” she replied, “it was sweet of 
you. You did it impulsively because you 
were sorry for me, and I think it was 
sweet. But impulse is not courage.” 

So now Tommy knew all about it. His 
plain-spoken critic had been examining 
him with a candle and had paid particular 
attention to his defects, but against them 
she set the fact that he had done some- 
thing chivalrous for her, and it held her 
heart though the others were in posses- 
sion of the head. How like a woman ! he 
thought with a pleased smile. He knew 
them. 

Still he was chagrined that she made so 
little of his courage, and it was to stab her 
that he said, with subdued bitterness, “ I 
always had a suspicion that I was that 
sort of person, and it is pleasant to have 
it pointed out by one’s oldest friend. No 
one will ever accuse you of want of cour- 
age, Grizel.” 

She was looking straight at him, and her 
eyes did not drop, but they looked still 
more wistful. Tommy did not understand 
the courage that made her say what she 
had said, but he knew he was hurting her, 
he knew that if she was too plain-spoken 
it was out of loyalty, and that to wound 
Grizel because she had to speak her mind 
was a shame, yes, he always knew that. 

But he could do it, he could even go 
on, “And it is satisfactory that you have 
thought me out so thoroughly, because 
you will not need to think me out any 
more. You know me now, Grizel, and 
can have no more fear of me.” 

“ When was I ever afraid of you ? ” 
she demanded. She was looking at him 
suspiciously now. 

“ Never as a girl ? ” he asked. It 
jumped out of him ; he was sorry as soon 
as he had said it. 

There was a long pause. “ So you re- 
membered it all the time,” she said, quiet- 
ly. “You have been making pretence — 
again ! ” 

He asked her to forgive him, and she 
nodded her head at once. “ But why 
did you pretend to have forgotten ? ” 

“ I thought it would please you, 
Grizel.” 


Tommy and Grizel 


“ Why should pretence please me ? ” 
She rose suddenly in a white heat, “You 
don’t mean to say that you think I am 
afraid of you still ? ” 

He said No a moment too late. He 
knew it was too late. 

“ Don’t be angry with me, Grizel,” he 
begged her, earnestly, “ I am so glad 
I was mistaken, it made me miserable, 

I have been a terrible blunderer, but I 
mean well, I misread your eyes.” 

“ My eyes ? ” 

“They have always seemed to be watch- 
ing me, and often there was such a wist- 
ful look in them, it reminded me of the 
past.” 

“You thought I was still afraid of you ! 
Say it,” said Grizel, stamping her foot, but 
he would not say it. It was not merely 
fear that he thought he had seen in her 
eyes, you remember. This was still his 
comfort, and I suppose it gave the touch 
of complacency to his face that made 
Grizel merciless. She did not mean to be 
merciless, but only to tell the truth. If 
some of her words were scornful, there 
was sadness in her voice all the time in- 
stead of triumph. “For years and years,” 
she said, standing straight as an elvint, “ I 
have been able to laugh at all the igno- 
rant fears of my childhood, and if you 
don’t know why I have watched you and 
been unable to help watching you since 
you came back, I shall tell you. But I 
think you might have guessed, you who 
write books about women. It is because 
I liked you when you were a boy, you 
were often horrid, but you were my first 
friend when every other person was against 
me ; you let me play with you when no 
other boy or girl would let me play, and 
so all the time you have been away I 
have been hoping that you were growing 
into a noble man, and when you came 
back I watched to see whether you were 
the noble man I wanted you so much to 
be, and you are not. Do you see now 
why my eyes look wistful ? It is be- 
cause I wanted to admire you, and I 
can’t.” 

She went away, and the great authority 
on women raged about the room. Oh, 
but he was galled ! There had been five 
feet nine of him, but he was shrinking. 
By and by the red light came into his 
eyes. 


CHAPTER IX 

GALLANT BEHAVIOR OF T. SANDYS 

HERE were now no fewer 
than three men engaged, 
each in his own way, in 
the siege of Grizel, noth- 
ing in common between 
them except insulted van- 
ity. One was a broken fellow who took for 
granted that she preferred to pass him by 
in the street ; his bow was also an apology 
to her for his existence ; he not only knew 
that she thought him wholly despicable 
but agreed with her ; in the long ago (yes- 
terday, for instance) he had been happy, 
courted, esteemed, he had even esteemed 
himself, and so done useful work in the 
world, but she had flung him to earth so 
heavily that he had made a hole in it out 
of which he could never climb ; there he 
lay damned, hers the glory of destroying 
him ; he hoped she was proud of her 
handiwork. That was one Thomas San- 
dys, the one perhaps who put on his 
clothes in the morning, but it might be 
number two who took them off at night. 
He was a good - natured cynic, vastly 
amused by the airs this little girl put on 
before a man of note, and he took a ma- 
licious pleasure in letting her see that they 
entertained him. He goaded her inten- 
tionally into expressions of temper be- 
cause she looked prettiest then, and trifled 
with her hair (but this was in imagination 
only) and called her a quaint child (but 
this was beneath his breath). The third 
— he might be the one who wore the 
clothes — was a haughty boy who was not 
only done with her forever but meant to 
let her see it. (His soul cried, O, O for a 
conservatory and some of society’s dar- 
lings, and Grizel at the window to watch 
how I get on with them !) And now that 
I think of it there was also a fourth, 
Sandys the grave author, whose life in two 
vols. 8vo I ought at this moment to be 
writing, without a word about the other 
Tommies. They amused him a good deal. 
When they were doing something big he 
would suddenly appear and take a note 
of it. 

The boy, who was stiffly polite to her 
(when Tommy was angry he became very 



Tommy and Grizel 


polite), told her that he had been invited 
to the Spittal, the seat of the Rintoul 
family, and that he understood there were 
some charming girls there. 

“ I hope you will like them,” Grizel 
said, pleasantly. 

“ If you could see how they will like 
me ! ” he wanted to reply, but of course he 
could not, and unfortunately there was no 
one by to say it for him. Tommy often 
felt this want of a secretary. 

The abject one found a glove of GrizePs 
that she did not know she had lost and 
put it in his pocket. There it lay without 
her knowledge. He knew that he must 
not even ask them to bury it with him in 
his grave. This was a little thing to ask, 
but too much for him. He saw his effects 
being examined after all that was mortal 
of T. Sandys had been consigned to 
earth, and this pathetic little glove com- 
ing to light. Ah, then, then Grizel would 
know ! By the way what would she have 
known ? I am sure I cannot tell you. 
Nor could Tommy, forced to face the 
question in this vulgar way, have told you ; 
yet whatever it was it gave him some moist 
moments. If Grizel saw him in this mood 
her reproachful look implied that he was 
sentimentalizing again. How little this 
chit understood him. 

The man of the world sometimes came 
upon the glove in his pocket and laughed 
at it as such men do when they recall their 
callow youth. He took walks with Grizel 
without her knowing that she accompa- 
nied him, or rather, he let her come, she 
was so eager. In his imagination (for 
bright were the dreams of Thomas !) he 
saw her looking longingly after him, just 
as the dog looks, and then not being 
really a cruel man, he would call over his 
shoulder, “ Put on your hat, little woman ; 
you can come.” Then he conceived her 
wandering with him through the den and 
Caddam wood, clinging to his arm and 
looking up adoringly at him. “ What a 
loving little soul it is ! ” he said, and 
pinched her ear, whereat she glowed with 
pleasure. “ But I forgot,” he would add, 
bantering her, “ you don’t admire me ; 
heigho, Grizel wants to admire me, but 
she can’t ! ” He got some satisfaction 
out of these flights of fancy, but it had a 
scurvy way of deserting him in the hour 
of greatest need ; where was it, for in- 


stance, when the real Grizel appeared and 
fixed that inquiring eye on him ? 

He went to the Spittal several times, 
Elspeth with him when she cared to go, 
for Lady Rintoul and all the others .had 
to learn and remember that, unless they 
made much of Elspeth, there could be no 
T. Sandys for them. He glared at anyone, 
male or female, who on being introduced 
to Elspeth did not remain, obviously 
impressed, by her side. “ Give pleasure 
to Elspeth or away I go,” was written all 
over him, and it had to be the right kind 
of pleasure too, the ladies must feel that 
she was more innocent than they, and talk 
accordingly. He would walk the flower- 
garden with none of them until he knew 
for certain that the man walking it with 
little Elspeth was a person to be trusted. 
Once he was convinced of this, however, 
he was very much at their service, and so 
little to be trusted himself that perhaps 
they should have had careful brothers 
also. He told them one at a time that 
they were strangely unlike all the other 
women he had known, and held their hands 
a moment longer than was absolutely nec- 
essary, and then went away, leaving them 
and him a prey to conflicting and puzzling 
emotions. 

Lord Rintoul, whose hair was so like 
his skin that in the family portraits he 
might have been painted in one color, 
could never rid himself of the feeling that 
it must be a great thing to a writing chap 
to get a good dinner, but her ladyship al- 
ways explained him away with an apolo- 
getic smile which went over his remarks 
like a piece of india-rubber, so that in the 
end he had never said anything. She 
was a slight, pretty woman of nearly forty 
and liked Tommy because he remembered 
so vividly her coming to the Spittal as a 
bride. He even remembered how she 
had been dressed, her white bonnet, for 
instance. 

“ For long,” Tommy said, musing, “ I 
resented other women in white bonnets : 
it seemed profanation.” 

“ How absurd ! ” she told him, laugh- 
ing. “You must have been quite a small 
boy at the time.” 

“ But with a lonely boy’s passionate 
admiration for beautiful things,” he an- 
swered, and his gravity was a gentle rebuke 
to her. “It was all a long time ago,” he 


Tommy and Grizel 


said, taking both her hands in his, “ but I 
never forget, and, dear lady, I have often 
wanted to thank you.” What he was 
thanking her for is not precisely clear, but 
she .knew that the artistic temperament 
is an odd sort of thing, and from this 
time Lady Rintoul liked Tommy and even 
tried to find the right wife for him among 
the families of the surrounding clergy. 
His step was sometimes quite springy 
when he left the Spittal, but Grizel’ s 
shadow was always waiting for him some- 
where on the way home to take the life 
out of him, and after that it was again, 
O sorrowful disillusion, O, world gone 
gray. Grizel did not admire him, T. 
Sandys was no longer a wonder to Grizel. 
He went home to that as surely as the 
laborer to his evening platter. 

To have Grizel admire him again ! 
what monstrous things he would have done 
for it, what a monstrous thing he did. 

Corp had got a holiday, and they were 
off together fishing the Drumly Water, by 
Lord Rintoul’s permission. They had 
fished the Drumly many a time without it, 
and this was to be another such day as 
those of old ; the one who woke at four 
was to rouse the other. Never had either 
waked at four, but one of them was mar- 
ried now, and any woman can wake at 
any hour she chooses, so at four Corp was 
pushed out of bed and soon thereafter 
they took the road. Grizel’s blinds were 
already up. “ Do you mind,” Corp said, 
“ how often when we had boasted we 
were to start at four and didna get roaded 
till six, we wriggled by that window so 
that Grizel shouldna see us ? ” 

“ She usually did see us,” Tommy re- 
plied, ruefully. “ Grizel always spotted 
us, Corp, when we had anything to hide, 
and missed us when we were anxious to 
be seen.” 

“ There was no jouking her,” said 
Corp. “ Do you mind how that used 
to bother you ? ” a senseless remark to a 
man whom it was bothering still, or 
shall we say to a boy, for the boy came 
back to Tommy when he heard the 
Drumly singing ; it was as if he had 
suddenly seen his mother looking young 
again. There had been a thunder-shower 
as they drew near, followed by a rush of 
wind that pinned them to a dyke, swept 
the road bare, banged every door in the 


glen, and then sank suddenly as if it had 
never been, like a mole in the sand. But 
now the sun was out, every fence and 
farm-yard rope was a string of diamond 
drops, there was one to every blade of 
grass, they lurked among the wild roses, 
larks drunken with their song shook them 
from their wings, the whole earth shone 
so gloriously with them that for a time 
Tommy ceased to care whether he was 
admired. We can pay nature no higher 
compliment. 

But when they came to the Slugs ! — 
The Slugs of Kenny is a wild crevice 
through which the Drumly cuts its way, 
black and treacherous, into a lonely glade 
where it gambols for the rest of its short 
life ; you would not believe to see it 
laughing that it had so lately escaped 
from prison. To the Slugs they made 
their way, not to fish, for any trout that 
are there are thinking forever of the way 
out and of nothing else, but to eat their 
luncheon, and they ate it sitting on the 
mossy stones their persons had long ago 
helped to smooth and looking at a rowan 
branch, which now, as then, was trailing 
in the water. 

There were no fish to catch, but there 
was a boy trying to catch them. He was 
on the opposite bank, had crawled down 
it, only other boys can tell how, a bare- 
footed urchin of ten or twelve with an 
enormous bagful of worms hanging from 
his jacket-button. To put a new worm 
on the hook without coming to destruc- 
tion he first twisted his legs about a young 
birch and put his arms round it. He 
was after a big one, he informed Corp, 
though he might as well have been fish- 
ing in a treatise on the art of angling. 

Corp exchanged pleasantries with him, 
told him that Tommy was Captain Ure, 
and that he was his faithful servant Alex- 
ander Bett, both of Edinburgh. Since 
the birth of his child, Corp had become 
something of a humorist. Tommy was 
not listening. As he lolled in the sun he 
was turning, without his knowledge, into 
one of the other Tommies. Let us watch 
the process. 

He had found a half-fledged mavis 
lying dead among the grass. Remember 
also how the larks had sung after rain. 

Tommy lost sight and sound of Corp 
and the boy. What he seemed to see was 


Tommy and Grizel 


a baby lark that had got out of its nest 
sideways, a fall of half a foot only, but a 
dreadful drop for a baby. “ You can 
get back this way,” its mother said, and 
showed it the way, which was quite easy, 
but when the baby tried to leap, it fell on 
its back. Then the mother marked out 
lines on the ground from one to the other of 
which it was to practise hopping, and soon 
it could hop beautifully so long as its moth- 
er was there to say every moment, “ How 
beautifully you hop.” “Now teach me to 
hop up,” the little lark said, meaning that 
it wanted to fly, and the mother tried to do 
that also, but in vain ; she could soar up, 
up, up bravely, but could not explain how 
she did it. This distressed her very much, 
and she thought hard about how she had 
learned to fly long ago last year, but all 
she could recall for certain was that you 
suddenly do it. “Wait till the sun comes 
out after rain,” she said, half remember- 
ing. “What is sun, what is rain?” the 
little bird asked; “if you cannot teach me 
to fly, teach me to sing.” “ When the sun 
comes out after rain,” the mother replied, 
“ then you will know how to sing.” The 
<rain came, and glued the little bird’s wings 
together. “ I shall never be able to fly 
nor to sing,” it wailed. Then of a sudden 
it had to blink its eyes, for a glorious light 
had spread over the world, catching every 
leaf and twig and blade of grass in tears 
and putting a smile into every tear. The 
baby bird’s breast swelled, it did not know 
why ; and it fluttered from the ground, it 
did not know how. “The sun has come 
out after the rain,” it trilled, “thank you, 
sun, thank you, thank you, O, mother, did 
you hear me, I can sing ! ” And it floated 
up, up, up, crying “Thank you, thank you, 
thank you ! ” to the sun, “ O mother, 
do you see me, I am flying ! ” and being 
but a baby it soon was gasping, but still 
it trilled the same ecstasy, aqd when it 
fell panting to earth it still trilled, and 
the distracted mother called to it to take 
breath or it would die, but it could not 
stop. “Thank you, thank you, thank you! ” 
it sang to the sun till its little heart burst. 

With filmy eyes Tommy searched him- 
self for the little pocket-book in which 
he took notes of such sad thoughts as 
these, and in place of the book he found 
a glove wrapped in silk paper. He sat 
there with it in his hand, nodding his 


head over it so broken-heartedly you 
could not have believed that he had for- 
gotten it for several days. 

Death was still his subject, but it was no 
longer a bird he saw, it was a very noble 
young man, and his white dead face stared 
at the sky from the bottom of a deep 
pool. I don’t know how he got there, but 
a woman who would not admire him had 
something to do with it. N o sun after rain 
had come into that tragic life ; to the water 
that had ended it his white face seemed 
to be saying, “ Thank you, thank you, 
thank you.” It was the' old story of a 
faithless woman. He had given her his 
heart and she had played with it. For 
her sake he had striven to be famous, for 
her alone had he toiled through dreary 
years in London, the goal her lap in which 
he should one day place his book, a poor 
trivial little work he knew (yet much ad- 
mired by the best critics) ; never had his 
thoughts wandered for one instant of that 
time to another woman, he had been as 
faithful in life as in death, and now she 
came to the edge of the pool and peered 
down at his staring eyes and laughed. 

He had got thus far when a shout from 
Corp brought him, dazed, to his feet. It 
had been preceded by another cry as the 
boy and the sapling he was twisted round 
toppled into the river together, uprooted 
stones and clods pounding after them and 
discoloring the pool into which the torrent 
rushes between rocks, to swirl frantically 
before it dives down a narrow channel 
and leaps into another cauldron. 

There was no climbing down those 
precipitous rocks. Corp was shouting, 
gesticulating, impotent. “ How can you 
stand so still ? ” he roared. 

For Tommy was standing quite still, 
like one not yet thoroughly awake. The 
boy’s head was visible now and again as 
he was carried round in the seething 
water; when he came to the outer ring 
down that channel he must infallibly go, 
and every second or two he was in a wider 
circle. 

Tommy, who could not swim, kicked 
off his boots. 

“ You wouldna dare ! ” Corp cried, 
aghast. 

I am sure Tommy had no intention of 
daring, he was merely putting off the de- 
cision for a moment. But the action had 


Tommy and Grizel 


its momentary effect, turning him suddenly 
into one of those heroes of Pym, who had 
so often kicked off their boots and dived, 
“ Very well, Grizel, you shall admire me 
now ! ” 

He flung off his coat, and as there was 
nothing more to do but leap, this was 
bringing him to his senses, when he saw 
the glove, now clutched in his hands. 
“ Give her that,” he said, handing it to 
Corp, but forgetting to mention the lady’s 
name, “ and tell her it never left my heart.” 
This was so unexpected that it did for 
Tommy ; overcome by the splendor of 
the sentiment he shut his eyes and jumped. 
Corp saw him strike the water and dis- 
appear, he tore along the bank as he had 
never run before, until he got to the wa- 
ter’s edge below the Slugs and climbed 
and fought his way to the scene of the 
disaster. Before he reached it, however, 
we should have had no hero had not the 
sapling, the cause of all this pother, made 
amends by barring the way down the nar- 
row channel. Tommy was clinging to it 
and the boy to him, and at some risk 
Corp got them both ashore, where they 
lay gasping like fish in a creel. 

The boy was the first to rise, to look 
for his fishing-rod, and he was surprised 
to find no six-pounder at the end of it. 
“She has broke the line again ! ” he said, 
for he was sure then and ever afterward 
that a big one had pulled him in. 

Corp slapped him for his ingratitude, 
but the man who had saved this boy’s life 
wanted no thanks. “ Off to your home 
with you, wherever it is,” he said to the 
boy, who obeyed silently, and then to 
Corp, “He is a little fool, Corp, but not 
such a fool as I am.” He lay on his 
face shivering, not from cold, not from 
shock, but in a horror of himself. I think 
Tommy saw himself more clearly then 
than ever before ; for long he had won- 
dered, but half jocularly, to what lengths a 
sentimental impulse might carry him, and 
now he knew. It was not water that he 
tried to shake fiercely from him when he 
rose, it was the monstrous part of him 
that had done this deed, and I suppose 
he really did think before he reached home 
that he had left it to rot on the banks of 
the Drumly. It was only after many such 
struggles for freedom that he could laugh 
grimly at them, knowing even while he 


fought that the wrestle must turn into an 
embrace. 

They lit a fire among the rocks at which 
he sought to dry his clothes, and then 
they set out for home, Corp doing all the 
talking. “ What a town there will be 
about this in Thrums ! ” was his text, and 
he was surprised when Tommy at last 
broke silence by saying, passionately, 
“ Never speak about this to me again, 
Corp, as long as you live. Promise me 
that. Promise never to mention it to any- 
one. I want no one to know what I did 
to-day, and no one ever will know unless 
you tell ; the boy can’t tell, for we are 
strangers to him.” 

“He thinks you are a Captain Ure and 
that I’m Alexander Bett, his servant,” said 
Corp. “ I telled him that for a divert.” 

“ Then let him continue to think that.” 

Of course Corp promised. “ And I’ll 
go to the stake afore I break my prom- 
ise,” he swore, happily remembering one 
of the Jacobite oaths, but he was puzzled. 
They would have made so much of Tom- 
my had they known. They would think 
him a wonder. Did he not want that ? 

“ No,” Tommy replied. 

“ You used to like it ; you used to like 
it most michty.” 

“ 1 have changed.” 

“Ay, you have ; but since when ? Since 
you took to making printed books ? ” 

Tommy did not say, but it was more re- 
cently than that. What he was foregoing 
no one could have needed to be told less 
than he; the magnitude of the sacrifice 
was what enabled him to make it ; he was 
always at home among the superlatives, 
it was the little things that bothered him. 
In his present fear of the ride that his old 
man of the sea might yet goad him to, he 
craved for mastery over self, he seemed to 
get it by declining the glory for which he 
had so nearly flung away his life. 

His self-punishment was like refusing 
a crown, and Tommy knew it and was 
thankful. Grizel would never know how 
strong a man he was ; well, now that he 
knew it himself, he could bear that also. 
There was even a certain piquancy in the 
situation. He saw himself submitting to 
her reproaches with a brave smile. 

Thus he reached home, a rider with 
control of the reins at last. No more 
sentiment for Tommy. 


Tommy and Grizel 


CHAPTER X 

GAVINIA ON THE TRACK 

ORP, you remember, had 
said that he would go to 
the stake rather than break 
his promise, and he meant 
it too, though what the 
stake was and why such a 
pother about going to it, he did not know. 
He was to learn now, however, for to the 
stake he had to go. This was because 
Gavinia when folding up his clothes 
found in one of the pockets a glove 
wrapped in silk paper. 

Tommy had forgotten it until too late, 
for when he asked Corp for the glove it 
was already in Gavinia’s possession, and 
she had declined to return it without an 
explanation. “You must tell her noth- 
ing,” Tommy said, sternly; he was uneasy, 
but relieved to find that Corp did not 
know whose glove it was, nor even why 
gentlemen carry a lady’s glove in their 
pocket. 

At first Gavinia was mildly curious 
only, but her husband’s refusal to answer 
any questions roused her dander. She 
tried cajolery, fried his take of trout 
deliciously for him, and he sat down to 
them sniffing. They were small, and the 
remainder of their brief career was in two 
parts. First he lifted them by the tail, 
then he laid down the tail. But not a 
word about the glove. 

She tried tears. “ Dinna greet, woman,” 
he said in distress ; " what would the bairn 
say if he kent I made you greet ! ” 

Gavinia went on greeting, and the baby, 
waking up, promptly took her side. 

“ D — n the thing ! ” said Corp. 

“ Your ain bairn ! ” 

“ I meant the glove,” he roared. 

It was curiosity only that troubled Ga- 
vinia. A reader of romance, as you may 
remember, she had encountered in the 
printed page a score of ladies who on 
finding such parcels in their husbands’ 
pockets left their homes at once and for- 
ever, and she had never doubted but that 
it was the only course to follow, such is 
the power of the writer of fiction. But 
when the case was her own she was mere- 
ly curious ; such are the limitations of the 


writer of fiction. That there was a woman 
in it she did not believe for a moment. 
This of course did not prevent her saying, 
with a sob, “ Wha is the woman ? ” 

With great earnestness Corp assured 
her that there was no woman. He even 
proved it. “Just listen to reason, Ga- 
vinia. If I was sich a black as to be 
chief wi’ ony woman, and she wanted to 
gie me a present, weel, she might gie me 
a pair o’ gloves, but one glove, what use 
would one glove be to me ? I tell you if 
a woman had the impidence to gie me one 
glove, I would fling it in her face.” 

Nothing could have been clearer, and 
he had put it thus considerately because 
when a woman, even the shrewdest of 
them, is excited (any man knows this) one 
has to explain matters to her as simply 
and patiently as if she were a four-year- 
old, yet Gavinia affected to be uncon- 
vinced, and for several days she led Corp 
the life of a lodger in his own house. 

“ Hands off that poor innocent,” she 
said when he approached the baby. 

If he reproved her she replied, meekly, 
“ What can you expect frae a woman that 
doesna wear gloves ? ” 

To the baby she said, “He despises 
you, my bonny, because you hae no 
gloves, ay, that’s what maks him turn up 
his nose at you, but your mother is fond 
o’ you, gloves or no gloves.” 

She told the baby the story of the glove 
daily, with many monstrous additions. 

When Corp came home from his work 
she said that a poor love-lorn female had 
called with a boot for him and a request 
that he should carry it in the pocket of 
his Sabbath breeks. 

Worst of all, she listened to what he 
said in the night. Corp had a habit of 
talking in his sleep. He was usually tak- 
ing the tickets at such times, and it had 
been her custom to stop him violently, but 
now she changed her tactics, she encour- 
aged him. “ I would be lying in my bed,” 
he said to Tommy, “ dreaming that a man 
had fallen into the Slugs, and instead o’ 
trying to save him I cried out ‘ Tickets 
there, all tickets ready,’ and first he hands 
me a glove and neist he hands me a boot 
and havers o’ that kind sich as onybody 
dreams, but in the middle o’ my dream it 
comes ower me that I had better waken 
up to see what Gavinia’s doing, and I 




Tommy and Grizel 


open my een, and there she is, sitting up, 
hearkening avidly to my every word and 
putting sly questions to me about the 
glove.” 

“ What glove ?” Tommy asked, coldly. 

“ The glove in silk paper.” 

“ I never heard of it,” said Tommy. 

Corp sighed. “No,” he said, loyally, 
“ neither did I,” and he went back to the 
station and sat gloomily in a wagon. He 
got no help from Tommy, not even when 
rumors of the incident at the Slugs be- 
came noised abroad. 

“ A’body kens about the laddie now,” 
he said. 

“ What laddie ? ” Tommy inquired. 

“ Him that fell into the Slugs.” 

“ Ah, yes,” Tommy said, “ I have just 
been reading about it in the paper. A 
plucky fellow, this Captain Ure who 
saved him. I wonder who he is.” 

“I wonder ! ” Corp said, with a groan. 

“ There was an Alexander Bett with 
him, according to the papers,” Tommy 
went on. “ Do you know any Bett ? ” 

“ It’s no a Thrums name,” Corp re- 
plied, thankfully, “ I just made it up.” 

“ What do you mean ? ” Tommy asked, 
blankly. 

Corp sighed, and went back again to 
the wagon. He was particularly truculent 
that evening when the six o’clock train 
came in. “ Tickets there, look slippy wi’ 
your tickets.” His head bobbed up at 
the window of another compartment, 
“Tick ” he began and then he ducked. 

The compartment contained a boy, 
looking as scared as if he had just had 
his face washed, and an old woman who 
was clutching a large linen bag as if ex- 


pecting some scoundrel to appear through 
the floor and grip it. With her other hand 
she held on to the boy, and being unused 
to travel they were both sitting very self- 
conscious, humble and defiant, like per- 
sons in church who have forgotten to bring 
their Bible. The general effect, however, 
was lost on Corp, for whom it was enough 
that in one of them he recognized the boy 
of the Slugs. He thought he had seen the 
old lady before also, but he could not give 
her a name. It was quite a relief to him 
to notice that she was not wearing gloves. 

He heard her inquiring for one Alex- 
ander Bett and being told that there was 
no such person in Thrums. “ He’s mar- 
ried on a woman of the name of Gavinia,” 
said the old lady, and then they directed 
her to the house of the only Gavinia in 
the place. With dark forebodings Corp 
skulked after her. He remembered who 
she was now. She was the old woman 
with the nut-cracker face on whom he 
had cried in more than a year ago to say 
that Gavinia was to have him. Her mud 
cottage had been near the Slugs. Yes, 
and this was the boy who had been sup- 
ping porridge with her. Corp guessed 
rightly that the boy had remembered his 
unlucky visit. “I’m doomed!” Corp 
muttered to himself, pronouncing it in 
another way. 

The woman, the boy, and the bag en- 
tered the house of Gavinia and presently 
she came out with them. She was look- 
ing very important and terrible. They 
went straight to Ailie’s cottage, and Corp 
was wondering why, when he suddenly 
remembered that Tommy was to be there 
at tea to-day. 


(To be continued.) 





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